 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Eoin McAuley
Date: 2000-08-31 07:44
I bet that caught your eye! I often stop my self typing "repair man" and search around for a suitable alternative. "Repair person" sounds stupid, "repairer" is too hard to say, "tech" sounds too tech.
My repair man is a man. So are all the others I've heard about. Are there in fact any woman involved in this noble and essential profession? If not, am I worrying unduly, or does using the term "repair man" show an inherent bias, causing women to be intimidated and turned off the job?
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Author: J. Butler
Date: 2000-08-31 11:13
There are MANY fine "repairman" in the field who are female.
J. Butler
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2000-08-31 12:18
I think leaving sexism out of conversion where it doesn't need to be is a good start, since it makes us aware of our accidental biases. I use "repairperson" if I don't know the sex or I'm taling in general, and "repairman" or "repairwoman" if I'm talking of one I know.
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Author: Mario
Date: 2000-08-31 12:52
I agree. We must eradicate sexist words from our vocabulary and eliminate this opressing suffix ("...man"). I am starting today and I will refer to 50% of the population as woperson.
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Author: Dee
Date: 2000-08-31 13:34
I do not think that it shows undue bias or "scares women off." In the English language, "man" when used as a suffix takes on the generic meaning of the species. Not only is it unaccented when used as a suffix, it is further slurred and softened so that its gender connotations disappear. To me those who worry about it are putting the em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LA-ble.
The trend of English is to use the shorter term over the longer. Therefore "repairperson" rather than "repairman" sounds and feels awkward and the term (and other similar substitutions) will be fighting an uphill battle.
To have separate terms is a solution but again repairwoman is longer and more awkward than repairman. In addition, the resulting shift in syllable emphasis required for the former term detracts from the important "repair" element of the term. It also bucks a trend in English to use a single term regardless of the person's gender. I have heard the term actor applied to both male and female.
Another drawback to replacing standard terms is that sometimes the new term comes to close to another word that people find objectionable. For example, "chairwoman" can come out sounding like "charwoman," although this is an honorable profession, it is humble and underpaid and most of us would not care to be mistaken for one.
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Author: Ken Shaw
Date: 2000-08-31 14:24
Drives me up the wall. I'm Politically Correct enough to avoid "repairman," yet "repairwoman" "tastes" almost as bad to me. Thus even though I have to force myself into awkward sentences, I maneuver it so I can say "repair shop" or "technician" or perhaps "repair tech" instead -- that or commit the grammatical atrocity of using "them" with a singular verb.
Oh for a natural sounding neuter form! Until then, perhaps we could settle on a one-syllable tag for "person." Beginning next April 1, let's start saying "schlumpf" instead. Take it to your nearest repairschlumpf.
Incidentally, I think the best woodwind technician in New York is a woman. She trained in the Haynes workshop and spends about half her time on flutes, but she's dynamite on clarinets.
Yours in grammar hell.
Ken Shaw
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Author: William
Date: 2000-08-31 14:31
I have most of my clarinet repair and maintanance done by Mary, the very competent woodwind repair technician who specializes in clarinets, at our local major music mall. The music mall also employes two other women who speciallize in saxophone and brass reairs. None of these ladies seem too mind being referred to as repair persons, techinicians or ladies...usually, I just call them by their first names. FYI--this very large music mall also employs many other women in administrative, sales and eductional positions. The store president is a man, but his mother still runs the sheet music department.
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Author: C. Hogue
Date: 2000-08-31 14:31
What's wrong with repair tech? I've seen this term used a lot on Sneezy. In my mind, what they do takes a good deal of skill -- so the use of "tech" seems appropriate. In some cases, repair artist might be better. One of my high school directors, on the other hand, was a repair bungler.
I deal with this kind of stuff every day -- I write for a living. MOST of the time, it is possible to use wording that is neither sexist or clunky. The two words I haven't been able to write around are craftsmanship and manhole.
P.S. to Mario: We're not "wopersons," we're womyn or wimmin.
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Author: C. Hogue
Date: 2000-08-31 14:34
Females constitute nearly 51 percent of the population, and males less than 50 percent. Sad fact of wars and biology.
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Author: Paul Lester
Date: 2000-08-31 15:03
One of the best and well know repairman is a sponsor on this board -- Linda Brannen! Her work is superb. Simply the best.
Paul
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2000-08-31 18:21
What a "Vunderbahr" set of posts!! and excellent discussion of peculiarities of our English language [possibly the best in our world for expression of meaning]. I have often wondered about the derivation of wo-man, my largest dictionary shows a "wifmann" [old Eng.] wife of man, but not a "woo man". I'll bet this kicks up some dust! I prefer the titles as above, myself. Don
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Author: Lelia
Date: 2000-08-31 20:22
I prefer to use "repair tech" and (joining Ken Shaw in Grammar Hell) the horrible compromise, "s/he", but I don't assume that people are sexists when they write, "repairman". It's ordinary English. There's a lot of English that's much worse. What a messy lumped-together language we've got. The word "children", for instance, is a double plural, formed from the Anglo Saxon plural "childru" to which confused invaders tacked on the Old High German plural "en". Nobody on this BB or on the mailing list has ever given me a sexist reaction when I've mentioned that I'm learning to do repair work, so if people want to call me a repairman when/if I ever get good enough to deserve the title, I won't get huffy about it.
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Author: Willie
Date: 2000-08-31 22:53
When I refer to a repairman, it is to refer to the species, not the sex as this has no bearing in this field. When a farmer hooks his plow to a mule he doesn't call it a plowjenny or plowjack. It is a plowmule. The sex makes no difference. Males and females of our species can be equal in any occupation out there except having babies, and I hear they are working on that.
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Author: Eoin McAuley
Date: 2000-08-31 23:31
Don, it's true that woman comes from "wife man". But this does not mean "wife of a man". The man means human, so "wife man" means "female human". The corresponding male term was "carlman", meaning "male human". The carl got dropped, so that the name "man" came to mean both the male and the species. The wife in housewife was the same word, it did not mean that the woman was married. There was once a word "housecarl". You also sometimes here the word "fishwife", a woman who sells fish.
There was a wonderful books and television series many years ago called "The Ascent of Man". But times change. The recent "sequel", about the palaeontology of humans was called "The Descent of Humankind". Captain Picard says "to boldly go where no-one has gone before".
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Author: Hiroshi
Date: 2000-09-01 01:21
I agree with Dee. In every dictionary,mankind means human being or 'man' kind(only when 'man' is stressed). Then craftman represents 'craft' human being, and craft 'man'kind only when 'man' is stressed. Maybe.....
Technician: As a man from a country of artisans, I rather feel this seems degrading their ability, i.e. meaning only technique, which can be read in a book, matters. 'Craft'man seems better. I would even use 'artisan' for some of the best ones.
By the way to me a Japanese Ms is also a strange word. (Married or not married, I don't care.) Then I use 'Miss' every time. The London Economist style book says also Ms is an ugly word.
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Author: Lelia
Date: 2000-09-01 12:34
Hiroshi wrote:
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By the way to me a Japanese Ms is also a strange word. (Married or not married, I don't care.) Then I use 'Miss' every time. The London Economist style book says also Ms is an ugly word.
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Thirty-five years ago, "Ms." sounded ugly and awkward to me, too, although I began using it right away because it did seem to me to solve a problem. Over the years, it stopped sounding strange to me. The language is going to evolve anyway, whether we like it or not, so when it's feasible for to take some control over the direction in which it evolves, we might as well, as long as that doesn't actually involve riots.... :-)
I think that usually when "Ms." sounds weird, it's because somebody who doesn't like the word for political reasons deliberately pronounces it in an over-emphasized way -- "Oh, MIZ Loban...." -- as a way of accusing someone of being "politically correct." I don't hear that too much any more. In the USA at least, "Ms." seems to have become normal.
For me, the problem with "repairperson" is that it adds more work to the word, in the form of an extra syllable -- and because of that awkward pairing of the "r" and the "p" followed by another "r", it's genuinely more difficult to pronounce clearly, especially for speakers of American English with our hard "r", than "repairman". That's the main reason I like "repair tech" -- the word stays short and easy to say, at least for native speakers of English.
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Author: Frank
Date: 2000-09-02 17:22
I think the term "repairman" has become generic. It used to describe all repairpersons. Sure, we can bother to try and be "conscious" of the male-centric connotation of the term, but do we say huwoman? No, it's human. Anthropologically when we talk about the origins of humanity (or huwomanity), we talk about the origins of man, not the origins of man and the origins of woman. (I think they're still looking for the origins of woman! :-)
Yes, it's good not to assume that all repairpersons are male, but no, I don't think it's necessary to assume we are being sexist by using the term generically.
Frank
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Author: Lelia
Date: 2000-09-02 19:21
Frank wrote:
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I think the term "repairman" has become generic.
[snip]
Yes, it's good not to assume that all repairpersons are male, but no, I don't think it's necessary to assume we are being sexist by using the term generically.
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I agree with that. Context tells the truth about whether someone's a sexist or just innocently using an everyday word. Some old, established words are so offensive in *any* context that there's no everyday way to use them inoffensively or "by accident." (I'm talking about ethnic epithets such as "the N-word," for instance.) I don't think "repairman" is remotely close to that kind of word, though. I just can't get myself worked up againt "repairman" even though I use "repair tech."
Hiroshi made an interesting comment above, about whether it's respectful enough to call someone a "tech". What do other people think? I agree with Hiroshi that there's a lot of artistry involved in working on clarinets. To me, calling someone a tech is respectful. It implies knowledge, training and expertise. I don't know if people hear it the way I mean it, though.
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2000-09-02 20:01
Good question and discussion, Lelia. Being an "degree-d" engineer working for a major oil co., we did distinguish our technicians, [as non-techs = techs] whose technical education did not extend to a BS MS ar PHD, from us with a degree to our name, in many instances this was not of any real significance. An artificial distinction?? One of the very best instrument repair men I have had the priviledge to learn from, always referred to himself as a "mechanic" . Nomenclature can be confusing!! Don
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Author: Jim
Date: 2000-09-03 02:17
Interesting posts! In New Jersey, official civil service-ese refers to a "repairer"... I was taught in school that "man" as in "mankind" or "fellow man" was in fact a gender neutral usage, but... I quickly learned in the seventies that it indeed did offend some women. My pet peeve is "chairperson", very awkward, but a "chair" still is a piece of furniture, and in some political hierarchies, "moderator" has specific meanings. I attended seminary at Drew Univ. in the mid seventies. Women in the ministry was a somewhat new concept in many denominations then (and even now!) and I remember one student saying that no male could ever understand her displeasure at the word "minister" always being refered to by the male pronoun. Having been a male lower grade elementary teacher in the early seventies, I told her that that was matched by the word "teacher" always being followed by the pronoun "she!" Language evolves, but I fear, never at the same rate as society!
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Author: Genie
Date: 2000-09-05 13:49
Once upon a time in the U.S. it was written, "all men were created equal." But applied to only applied to white, property-owning adult males. The rest of us weren't "men" and some of us were only 2/3s of a "man," according to the census.
Thank God times have changed! Let's help the langugage along.
My husband says man is not a neuter word because he is a MALE. He finds it intellectually dishonest in this day and age to employ the outdated use of "man" when there are so many good, not clunky alternatives -- people, humanity (my fav), humankind, and, if you must, persons.
As to the orgins of "man" -- if there wasn't woman, there wouldn't be man (and vica versa -- we need each other).
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Author: Dee
Date: 2000-09-05 23:06
Genie wrote:
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... My husband says man is not a neuter word because he is a MALE. He finds it intellectually dishonest in this day and age to employ the outdated use of "man" when there are so many good, not clunky alternatives -- people, humanity (my fav), humankind, and, if you must, persons.
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Sorry but if you eliminate the word man as referring to the species, you must also eliminate humanity, humankind, and homo sapiens for that matter. Go back to your Latin and Romance language roots and you will find that all of these are words for man and become generic when applied to the species or used as a suffix.
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Author: Genie
Date: 2000-09-06 13:54
Man as a stand-alone word is not a suffix.
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Author: Dee
Date: 2000-09-06 21:37
What word would you suggest to designate our species? If you will not permit man then I cannot permit human, humanity, humankind, homo sapiens, etc as all these tranlate in their original language forms as man.
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Author: Dee
Date: 2000-09-06 22:15
The term "man" did indeed originally refer to the species as a whole (see below). There used to be separate prefixes to designate male versus female varieties of the species. So one could consider it a corruption of the language that man came to also designate the male. Let's revive werman (or somesuch) to go along with woman.
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Third Edition. 1996.
USAGE NOTE: Traditionally, man and words derived from it have been used generically to designate any or all of the human race irrespective of sex. In Old English this was the principal sense of man, which meant “a human being” regardless of sex; the words wer and wyf (or wœpman and wifman) were used to refer to “a male human being” and “a female human being” respectively. But in Middle English man displaced wer as the term for “a male human being,” while wyfman (which evolved into present-day woman) was retained for “a female human being.”
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