Damn, that's some faint praise

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ableal

Feel free to...

Are you looking to get banned?

[meeera]

Originally Posted by ableal

Feel free to choke on your own hatred and ill-will.

I'll try to avoid you as best as I can. Farewell.

To a moderator? interesting choice. Good luck with that!

[Witty Username]

As this topic started because of Kobo's word choices, I think this fits well - certainly not worth starting another thread.
I bought a book yesterday using some of my accumulated points. The email acknowledgement of the transaction was titled "Congratulations on your redemption!"

It made me laugh once I realised where it was from, I do like CS with a sense of humour.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by Witty Username

The email acknowledgement of the transaction was titled "Congratulations on your redemption!"

Not going to lie, on the opposite end I do get the giggles whenever I grab a freebie from Epic Games and they email me a receipt thanking me for my purchase.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by meeera

I don't know where you got this list; a search does't find it anywhere for me. And over a third of it can be condensed into one listing, "disabled people". Several of the others are very obviously not generally accepted.

The list was found on the internet from a Google search. Several other search results had pretty much the same items though the order in the list varied. Items such as felons were on a minority of the lists.

Originally Posted by meeera

I'm getting exactly nine hits for GLBTQQIAPTS, so no, this is not in common use and not what "we are told to use" now. The common terms I see are LGBTQIA+, and the more pronounceable QUILTBAG.

We as in the sense of myself and my fellow employees. On an erratic basis, we get these lovely memos from HR about language to be used. At the least, they are often good for a chuckle.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by Witty Username

The email acknowledgement of the transaction was titled "Congratulations on your redemption!"

Perhaps they could use that line if they ran a "trade in your Kindle for a Kobo" promotion.

[rashkae]

A good, but quick, summary on why all of this does actually matter,, even outside the perceived 'offense seeking.'

https://longnow.org/seminars/02010/o...hapes-thought/

[icanhardlyread]

Originally Posted by Lykke

My general impression of the Kobo webpages is that the quality checks are… minimal? For instancet the Norwegian front page for months has had a large text saying "Must essential reading in all genres for less". Yeah, no one cares about Norwegian, but they should still fire their translator.

I realized the other day that the support pages are most likely machine-translated and probably not even checked by a human. The German version refers to the Sage as Salbei. Salbei means sage alright - as in the plant.

[Cyclops]

How are they being dissed?

[icanhardlyread]

Originally Posted by rashkae

A good, but quick, summary on why all of this does actually matter,, even outside the perceived 'offense seeking.'

https://longnow.org/seminars/02010/o...hapes-thought/

Personally, I believe that using inclusive language is generally a good thing. Anecdotally speaking, the only people I've encountered who oppose it do so for these reasons (which sometimes, but not always, go hand in hand):

• some simply do not agree that the group calling for inclusion has a legitimate claim in the first place, or at least don't think that the solution should affect them/their language use
• the majority of reactions to inclusive language seems to be grounded in sheer reactance; language is deeply personal and perceived as the primary means of expressing oneself, so the idea of "someone else telling me how to speak" is a complete non-starter for some people, regardless of the intention
• others acknowledge the issues, but feel that a few tweaks to language are irrelevant so long as the situation of the group in question is not improved substantially (see euphemism treadmill); in the extreme, these people also tend to believe that endless debates about inclusive language are taking away time, energy and political capital from issues that, if addressed, would increase living situations much more than any language change could

The first two, but especially the second one, seem to correlate with age quite a bit, which also makes sense intuitively: the longer you've been doing X, the harder you are going to fight someone telling you that X is wrong and to do Y instead. It causes cognitive dissonance between "I have been doing X my entire life" and "X is bad", as it could lead to the realization "I have been doing something bad". It's therefore easier to resolve the dissonance by dismissing the new idea that "X is bad" in the first place, rather than calling into question your past behavior and making the required changes to future behavior. There's also a heap of biases that affect this, such as the status-quo bias.

Anyhow, sorry I went on a bit of a rant there. As for the link you posted, I haven't watched the video yet, but based on the little blurb below, I'm immediately a bit wary as a linguist. As is often the case in pop-sci pieces about the relationship between language and thought, the presentation seems to exaggerate the impact and could lead someone without the necessary background in linguistics to think that the relationship is much more deterministic than it really is. I'll have to peek into the video when I'm not posting unprompted novels on forums.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by icanhardlyread

The first two, but especially the second one, seem to correlate with age quite a bit, which also makes sense intuitively: the longer you've been doing X, the harder you are going to fight someone telling you that X is wrong and to do Y instead.

Thanks for your insightful comments as a linguist. The ferocity of many of the reactions to the initial post, most from "men of a certain age", does tend to support the correlation you mentioned. As a man of (more or less) that age myself, I have no problem in accepting that language changes and evolves, and when it does so in a direction that includes more and excludes less (or "fewer", for the pedantic prescriptivists), that's a good thing, a change to be embraced. I've even managed to train myself to say "crewed" and "uncrewed" instead of the older gender-restricted versions.

[icanhardlyread]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

The ferocity of many of the reactions to the initial post, most from "men of a certain age"

I have to admit - the framing of those who ask for the use of inclusive language as people who have 'renounced the use and authority of reason' and who hold 'humanity in contempt' was certainly a reply that made me do a double-take.

"I don't understand and/or can't empathize with X, therefore doing X is entirely unreasonable and illogical" is certainly another common thread in these debates.

Since you mentioned prescriptivism: I find that it's a common way in which language is used as a tool to exclude or otherwise denigrate people belonging to certain groups. At the same time, it serves to identify oneself as belonging to a (supposedly) high-prestige in-group, e.g. of the 'refined' people that speak 'properly' and use 'logical' language (as if the latter two were a thing). Whether it's done consciously or not, it often seems to me like an attempt to establish authority over the discourse.

It's probably also not entirely unrelated to the fact that attacking someone for their lack of adherence to entirely arbitrary linguistic rules is typically easier than engaging with the actual arguments they're making. Yes, I'm still angry about the time someone tried to use a "black people speak degenerate English"-type argument as 'evidence' as to why the problems that black people face in the US are 'entirely home-made' and their plight to end systemic racism is therefore unfounded. An extreme example, to be sure, but I guess it illustrates the point I'm trying to make.

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

Thanks for your insightful comments as a linguist. The ferocity of many of the reactions to the initial post, most from "men of a certain age", does tend to support the correlation you mentioned. As a man of (more or less) that age myself, I have no problem in accepting that language changes and evolves, and when it does so in a direction that includes more and excludes less (or "fewer", for the pedantic prescriptivists), that's a good thing, a change to be embraced. I've even managed to train myself to say "crewed" and "uncrewed" instead of the older gender-restricted versions.

Should we edit all quotes to change language we find offensive regardless of all context? The basic rules of this forum don’t allow this just as an example, any quote of a members post can not be changed. You can of course chop it up however you like but any words you change must not be in the quote block. Might be more restrictive than this I’ve not tried delving deeper or pushing the issue.

I’ve no issue with language evolving and being adapted to be more inclusive. But for the nth time anyone spending 10 seconds looking at this ad should recognize from context that the ‘man’ here is used in place of‘human’, bonus insight if they recognize that it’s a quote from the late 19th century. Not as a slight against female authors as they are the majority of the selected sample by a wide margin, and are reviewed higher than their male counterparts.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

...I have no problem in accepting that language changes and evolves, and when it does so in a direction that includes more and excludes less (or "fewer", for the pedantic prescriptivists), that's a good thing, a change to be embraced...

This I agree with. Making language more inclusive is all to the good.

The problem with the example in the first post is that it is a quote (though unattributed, which I am also not fond of) from the past.

I don't feel comfortable with relegating Oscar Wilde to the dustbin of history simply because he didn't know to use inclusive language 100+ years ago.

I do think the quote could have been altered since they didn't mind not giving credit to the author. But in general, I think altering quotes should be avoided.

Another thing is the benefit of the doubt. Do you think Kobo, when putting that image together, was intending to offend? Was the usage of the word 'man' intended to be exclusionary, or was it used for another reason (like being part of an existing quote from a great writer)? Since they hope to sell as many books as possible, the assumption is no, they did not want to sir up a hornet's nest.

Lastly, I think we have begun using 'offended' entirely too much. I can see why someone might do a humorous double-take at the initial image (indeed, if all the books had been from female writers, that would have been even better). But was anyone truly offended? Did seeing that image cause anyone to lose sleep, ponder their value as a person or write a strongly worded message to the powers that be at Kobo? Honey, there are bigger fish to fry.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Lastly, I think we have begun using 'offended' entirely too much. I can see why someone might do a humorous double-take at the initial image (indeed, if all the books had been from female writers, that would have been even better). But was anyone truly offended? Did seeing that image cause anyone to lose sleep, ponder their value as a person or write a strongly worded message to the powers that be at Kobo? Honey, there are bigger fish to fry.

This is on-point. I was not even remotely offended by the image I took. I was amused by the cloth-eared (or tin-eared) clumsiness of the Kobo marketers who gave not a second's consideration to the juxtaposition of quote and book covers. It was the clumsiness and lack of forethought that entertained me sufficiently to prompt the screenshot. A quote saying that only "a great man" could write history posted above an image of historical fiction mostly written by women? It raised a chuckle for me, long before it raised many a hackle here.