Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 17, No. 423.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
www.princeton.edu/humanist/
Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu
[1] From: Aimée Morrison (32)
<aimee.morrison@ualberta.ca>
Subject: RE: 17.419 gender-testing
[2] From: Stephen Clark <srlclark@liverpool.ac.uk> (10)
Subject: Re: 17.419 gender-testing
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2003 07:55:08 +0000
From: Aimée Morrison <aimee.morrison@ualberta.ca>
Subject: RE: 17.419 gender-testing
hello again,
the link to the online prose gender-tester made the rounds of the student-list
(a public email forum devoted to topics of general interest) here at the
orlando project (a group, as you all undoubtedly know, writing an electronic,
encoded, history of women's writing in the british isles).
all the orlandians came out as he-man prose-writers. hilarious. let me just
stress this is not an orlando-related research question, but that most of the
team tried it out for fun. i, apparently, have a more manly prose style than
isobel grundy (that is, according to the site's measures, although isobel
disputes this ;->). ultimately, we all concluded that academic prose is
skewed male--especially as the site was intended to analyse fiction.
this insight about academic prose as a genre bearing more markers of
'maleness' than other kinds of writing, i think, we can link to malcom
haward's study's finding that female readers (what about the men?) have a bias
toward attributing authorship to men. i find this bias quite interesting--is
this a matter of perceived expertise? perceived authority? maybe this is why
academic prose skews 'manly' in the online tester. hm.
anyhow, this topic has caught the attention of the lay populace:
non-canadians may not have seen an opinion recent piece in the globe and mail,
a national newspaper--in the style section, no less--on the issue.
(regrettably, the article does not seem to be available on the paper's web
site).
hm.
aimee
. ++++++++++++++++++++++++
Aimée Morrison Office: 4-14 Humanities Ctr.
PhD Candidate, Dept. of English Phone: (780) 492-0298
University of Alberta Fax: (780) 492-8102
T6G 2E5 Email: ahm@ualberta.ca
"If we examine the Lives of all the Poets, we shall find that they have all
been miserable."
-- Susanna Watts, c1802
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2003 08:00:51 +0000
From: Stephen Clark <srlclark@liverpool.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: 17.419 gender-testing
> The more I worked on the topic, the more I realized how complex the
> reading-writing-gender issue is. One might have guessed that genre would
> have a role (detective novels a male realm? for example), but that did not
> seem to work, and the case of Dick Francis that Koppel and the others
> mention confirms that.
Dick Francis's work is written in close collaboration with his wife. See
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/482502.stm
Stephen Clark
Dept of Philosophy
University of Liverpool
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