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What's this about Newspeak: In my experience Newspeak was a dialect of language dictated by the illegitimate power structure to prevent the accidental communic

• tptacek 10y ago
  You may have "Newspeak" confused with "Doublespeak" (or I may have denuded Newspeak of its political goals). Isn't the word "doublespeak" itself an instance of Newspeak (or Basic English)? Replacing a latinization with a pair of simpler words, for instance, is what has happened in the conversion from "patronize" to "mansplain". At any rate: the two words, patronize and mansplain, mean the same thing, so feigning offense at the gendering of "mansplain" is a pitiful way to build an argument.
  • makomk 10y ago
    Newspeak was a political tool that was supposed to limit society's freedom of though by making ideas that went against the ruling power's goals literally impossible to express. Think about how that might apply here - by replacing the genderless "patronize" with the gendered "mansplain"[1], we embed the idea that this is something only men do to women into the language itself. (Obviously this doesn't make it impossible to criticize other kinds of patronizing behaviour, just harder than with this kind - Newspeak was a fictional conceit.) [1] And yes, one is clearly gendered while the other one isn't. If someone claimed that you couldn't describe a woman as "patronizing" because that term only applied to men, this would seem like nonsense to any English speaker, whereas "mansplaining" was explicitly coined as something only men could do to women.
    • tptacek 10y ago
      "Patronize" is not genderless.
      • jimmywanger 10y ago
        How is that? Currently is it. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/patronize http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/patronize Nowhere in there is patronize used in a gender based way at all. A patron is simply somebody who supports you and bankrolls you. Christopher Columbus had a female patron. Or are you grasping at straws here? Even m-w lists a male gendered meaning for the root word patron at the eighth definition. From m-w (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/patron http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/patron): 8: the chief male officer in some fraternal lodges having both men and women members
        • oska 10y ago
          The ultimate root of patronize is the Latin pater meaning ‘father’.
          • jimmywanger 10y ago
            Yes. Words change meanings over time/society. Why are you debating etymology? Patronize no longer has a gendered meaning. You would ask a women whether or not she patronized a store, for instance. If you're a small business owner, you'd equally thank a woman or a man for their patronage, or yell at them equally for them to stop patronizing your employees.
            • tptacek 10y ago
              The word has two meanings, and the one you invoke in your latter example is gendered. You would be yelling at your women customers for talking down to your employees as if from a father to a child. Which is fine; women can act like obnoxious men, too. Not only is Latin mostly gendered and the Latin root of this word clearly male, but the female root "matron" is also a common root for English words.
  • diydsp 10y ago
    Well I found this at wikipedia: Newspeak is the fictional language in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, written by George Orwell. It is a controlled language created by the totalitarian state Oceania as a tool to limit freedom of thought, and concepts that pose a threat to the regime such as freedom, self-expression, individuality, and peace. [1] It matches my definition very well: "In my experience Newspeak was a dialect of language dictated by the illegitimate power structure to prevent the accidental communication of truthful expression which could undermine its authority." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak