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  3. Nobody ever protests that an elementary school should be described as "manned" instead of "staffed," but dare to suggest a "men

Nobody ever protests that an elementary school should be described as "manned" instead of "staffed," but dare to suggest a "men

admin2022-11-16  95
问题     Nobody ever protests that an elementary school should be described as "manned" instead of "staffed," but dare to suggest a "men at work" sign could just as easily read "workers present" and you might cause a commotion. However, a growing number of women who fill allegedly male-dominated jobs are starting to speak up, and to push for gender neutrality in language.
    Recently, NASA has been working to erase all hints of gender bias. The agency even converted the phrase "manned mission" to "crewed mission". Casual English speech is riddled with gender-specific terms like "manned" that we now use without deliberate bias or sexism but that sometimes carry shadows of past decades’ antiquated stereotypes. In this way, it’s possible the phrase "giant leap for mankind" would now reference "humanity" instead.
    For fields stereotyped as male, like medicine or firefighting, we often create special two-noun phrases to describe the women—woman doctor, woman firefighter. In fact, these peculiar two-noun phrases are grammatically incorrect. The right way to modify the nouns is with an adjective, for example the word "female," as in "female doctor", unless we mean that a "woman scientist" is somehow an entirely different creature than a normal scientist. Some protest that the word "female" sounds clinical, but notably the grammatical mistake never occurs in reverse: we always manage correctly to apply the adjective "male," as in "a male nurse" rather than "a man nurse."
    However, Pilot Katherine Sharp Landdeck, author of The Women with Silver Wings, a book about the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) of WWII, embraces her two-noun term and says she belongs to the group Women Military Aviators. She doesn’t think the trend traces directly to the legendary WASPs. Rather, Landdeck thinks the term "woman pilot" originated outside the influence of the early female aviators themselves, and is reflective of the linguistic trend of outside observers applying two-noun phrases to outstanding women. And she does note that many women in aviation are willing to use the phrase as part of an effort to encourage more equality in a world where a mere 7 percent of participants are female.
    In fields where women remain the few, I will admit there is sometimes value in pointing out our existence to younger generations when it is relevant to do so. But maybe we can at least start to be more equal in our language, like NASA. Grammarian Mignon Fogarty recommends a simple test: ask yourself if you would phrase the sentence the same way if your subject were a man. If you would use "male" instead of "man," then use "female" instead of "woman." If you would omit his gender altogether, then consider whether mentioning her gender is necessary. It certainly wouldn’t be a giant leap for mankind, but it might be a tiny push for humanity.
The example of the description of the elementary school and signs at the workplace are given to________.
选项 A、introduce the topic of casual English speech
B、introduce the topic of linguistic gender neutrality
C、show the new development of English language
D、reveal the antiquated stereotypes in English language
答案B
解析 根据关键词“对小学的描述”以及“工作场所的标识”可以定位到文章开头第一句，而第二句就是答案句，即However, a growing number of women who fill allegedly male-dominated jobs are starting to speak up, and to push for gender neutrality in language.  (然而，越来越多的女性占据了所谓“男性主导”的职位，她们开始发声，并且推动语言中的性别中立)。由此可知，作者举这两个例子旨在引出文章主题——语言中性别中立的话题，故选B“引入语言中性别中立的话题”正确。第二段第三句提到Casual English speech is riddled with gender-specific terms like "manned" that we now use without deliberate bias or sexism but that sometimes carry shadows of past decades’ antiquated stereotypes. 即通俗英语充满了含有特定性别的用语，比如“载人的(manned，常用的男性化用词)”，我们现在经常使用这个词语，它并非含有刻意的偏见或者性别歧视，但它有时携带过去几十年陈旧的性别偏见的影子。本句话的重心在男性化用词上，而不在casual English speech上，而且它也不是文章主题，故排除A项和D项；C项“展示英语的新发展”的内容文中并没有出现，故排除。
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