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From: jeffw@tekecs.UUCP (Jeff Winslow)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: sexist language/bad attitudes
Message-ID: <5234@tekecs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 9-Apr-85 11:31:37 EST
Article-I.D.: tekecs.5234
Posted: Tue Apr  9 11:31:37 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 11-Apr-85 00:08:07 EST
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Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR
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> OK, we are all computer-oriented people, to some extent, or what are we
> doing here? Permit me to quote a couple of well-known computer scientists:
> 
> "We must recognize the strong and undeniable influence that our language
> exerts on our way of thinking, and in fact defines and delimits the
> abstract space in which we can formulate -- give form to -- our thoughts."
> 	N. Wirth, 1974
> 
> "Language is the vehicle by which we express our thoughts, and the
> relation between those thoughts and our language is a subtle and
> involuted one. The nature of language actually shapes and models the
> way we think.
> 	W. A. Wulf, 1977
> 
> Both quoted in Ghezzi and Jazayeri's "Programming Language Concepts",
> 1982, Wiley, p. 13.
> 
Oh, if we're all computer science types, and if a computer scientist says it's
so, then we'll believe it? Give me a break.

I think the most compelling reasons for altering one's usage (something I'm
not wild about) come from the individual experiences that I have read about
(on the net, for instance) and not from the *opinions* of people who happen
to be well-known computer scientists, or well-known anything else.

	This exercise in anarchic populism brought to you by...
				Jeff Winslow