A Person Paper on Purity in Languages

[pne]

An interesting article that John Cowan pointed out to me—using "black" vs "white" to talk about sexism in language (including, but not limited to, pronouns).

Comments

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

Somehow I doubt Hofstadter would mind this being distributed.

[kake]

I was hoping there'd be more of it somewhere - if one of the articles is public domain then maybe more of them are too.

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

Well, I just don't think it's as socially crucial for, say, his essay on parquet floor tilings from the same book to be distributed :-)

[kake]

I'm not sure about that. I think it's possible that a lot of social problems can be reduced to the problem of people not being used to thinking. The Person Paper satire is clever and funny but not, I think, likely to burrow into a brain that isn't ready for such ideas.

I find Hofstadter's writing very good at gently leading people via simple paths of reasoning through a succession of highly fertile points. The points themselves are far less important than their exit paths, and the more varied the points are, the more people are going to be sucked in to the cult of using one's noggin.

(Le Ton Beau de Marot is one of the best books I've ever read. If you haven't, do.)