[TGS]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

But the poll questions were "prefer to read books by X." Could this conflict here possibly be over subtle differences between the structure of English and Danish? (I see you and Ea are both in Denmark.) In English, saying that "I prefer books written by men" is pretty unambiguous in meaning that "the reason I chose these books is because a man wrote them"-- it is a statement of deliberate choice.

The two sentences "I prefer mostly books written by men." and "Men write most of the books I prefer." do not mean the same thing in English, though I image in the structure of some languages (maybe Danish, maybe not) they might.

I don't want to hijack the thread with a discussion about semantics*, but to give a counterexample Xanthe (apologies to Xanthe for quoting without permission) says:

I don't buy or read books specifically based upon the author's gender - that is immaterial to me.

But having said that, I'd say that the majority of my books are by women authors, mainly because they are the main writers of books that have a strong romance element, be they mystery/suspense, paranormal, fantasy, scifi or just general fiction/romance - which I enjoy.

Now, let's assume for the sake of argument that Xanthe is a woman, then the poll response

I'm a woman and prefer to read books by women authors

would seem to be appropriate in the circumstances - in which authors are not chosen because they are women, but they are chosen and they are women.

*Incidentally, although I live in Denmark I am a native British English speaker, so I don't think it's an issue about Danish/English. It might have more to do with my cognitive linguistics background - I don't see words have having determinate, fixed meanings, but rather as instruments that people use to intend to mean something. And I understood Ea to intend to mean something like "do the authors you tend to read happen to be women, or men, or do your choices show no real tendency either way", not "do you specifically choose to read male authors, female authors or is there no clear pattern".