Tuesday, October 14, 2003

I would also like to recommend Metamagical Themas for DRH's insight on sexism in language. He includes an incredible satire on sexist language, wherein he replaces all uses of man with white. The article is from a bigot's perspective and denigrates those who want to replace these "white" containing words with racially sensitive ones. Shifting the paradigm from sexist language, which seems so normal to us, to racist language, which stirs so many concrete emotions is an incredible way to highlight the way we ignore the sexism inherent in our everyday speech. 10:23:20 AM

I have just started reading an old book, Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern, by a fascinating author, Douglas R. Hofstadter. His first book, "Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" was incredible and won him the Pulitzer Prize. This book, MT, is a compilation of his Scientific American columns with numerous additions. He begins with self-referential sentences, which have fascinated me since I read GEB. Erik Benson has visited the same ground. I particularly enjoyed the sentences that take advantage of the use-mention distinction. When a word refers to something it is being used. When a word is quoted it is being mentioned. Thus the following: You can't have your use and mention it too. You can't have "your cake" and spell it "too". In order to make sense of "this sentence", you will have to ignore the quotes in "it". I will end with my favorite: You may quote me. 10:12:09 AM