| 词组 | chauvinism, chauvinist |
| 释义 | chauvinism, chauvinist It has become fashionable to take note—usually with disapproval—of the use of chauvinism and chauvinist to mean "male chauvinism" and "male chauvinist." Reader's Digest 1983 and Ebbitt 1982 point out that such use can be confusing, since the words do have other meanings. Consider, for instance, this letter to the editor: • Judge Greenfield's chauvinism was glaringly exposed when he leaned over backwards to acquit Martin Evans of rape charges —Harper's Weekly, 4 July 1975 If the hint contained in the reference to rape charges does not clear up the meaning of chauvinism instantly, then this use could be called unclear. But the sentence is quoted in isolation, and it is quite likely that a larger context would make the meaning clear. In fact, most of our unmodified examples of chauvinism and chauvinist that imply male are made perfectly clear by their contexts: • ... think V. Woolf could have written even better if she'd had a happier sex life. What a chauvinist remark! Yet it is also a deeply feminist remark — Margaret Drabble, The Listener, 27 Sept. 1973 • She becomes a Fern Man-Hate heroine and is inevitably shot by a chauvinist redneck —Anthony Burgess, Saturday Rev., 3 Feb. 1979 • The Canadian hierarchy this year gave serious attention to women who advocated the ordination of female priests—a cause that gets only chauvinist chuckles from U.S. bishops —Robert G. Hoyt, Harper's, October 1971 Even most instances of chauvinism and chauvinist in the original meaning, "excessive patriotism or nationalism," which is the sense most often encountered bereft of limiting modifiers, are clarified by context. It is sound advice, though, to be sure that either your context or your modifiers make your meaning plain; these words have spread quite a bit from their originally narrow nationalistic meanings. Of more interest, perhaps, are the commentators who disapprove the truncated use. The Harper 1975, 1985 panel disapproves by a wide margin (no breakdown of the vote by sex is given). Simon 1980 calls it a "trendy misuse." The assumption underlying this criticism seems to be that chauvinism has only recently been perverted from its original sense by feminists. Such, however, is not the case. Chauvinism has been used in English only since 1870 and by early in the 20th century it was having its boundaries stretched: • The literary chauvinism of the famous lecture on "The American Scholar" is perhaps more apparent than real —George Saintsbury, A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe, 1904 • He warned the New Yorker against the besetting sin of "Chauvinism, that intolerant attitude of mind which brooks no regard for anything outside his own circle and his own school" —H. W. Cushing, The Life of Sir William Osier, 1925 • Political nationalism expresses itself in economic Chauvinism —Contemporary Rev., March 1927 By the 1940s and 1950s this sort of use was common: • ... the rise of a Negro business spirit and Negro business chauvinism —Psychological Abstracts, March 1948 • A genial exercise in state chauvinism by one of this state's most assiduous, and readable, drum-beaters —New Yorker, 26 Nov. 1950 • ... if the inevitable professional chauvinisms can be abandoned —Wilbur Zelinsky, Geographical Rev., January 1951 • Mr. Hersey's chauvinism for Yale '36 —letter to the editor, Time, 29 Sept. 1952 • If we adjust these accounts for the understandable chauvinism of their authors, many of whom were Chippewa —Bernard J. James, American Anthropologist, April 1954 A pivotal role in the change from the notion of "great or undue partiality or attachment to one's own group or place" to that of "an attitude of superiority," which we find in male chauvinism and female chauvinism, was apparently played by the usage of Marxists. We have abundant evidence that chauvinism and chauvinist were used as generalized terms of abuse by and of Communists of various factions; such epithets as petty bourgeois chauvinism, Great Russian chauvinism, social chauvinism, race chauvinism, and white chauvinism were used with some frequency to attack individuals or groups within the Marxist movement. So common was chauvinism as a derogatory term, that a pamphlet issued by the U.S. Army during the heyday of McCarthyism on "How to Spot a Communist" used the word as one of its "clues." Here is another example from that period: • White chauvinism: The private Communist expression for racial prejudice against the Negroes. The Communists have other uses, or misuses, of the word chauvinism; a man who tends to relegate women to a secondary role is a "male chauvinist" — Herbert A. Philbrick, / Led 3 Lives, 1952 One of the favorite games of Time in those days was twitting the Daily Worker about some of their sillier exercises in self-abasement in the face of some change or other in the party line. On 16 May 1949 and 9 January 1950 Time quoted the Daily Worker's sports editor apologizing for errors he had made with respect to "white chauvinism" and again on 26 June 1950 quoted a headline apologizing for "white chauvinist errors." But the terminology had its uses: • ... drew a deep breath and let fly with a hot blast of pure male chauvinism —Time, 27 Mar. 1950 Male chauvinism was escaping from the jargon of Marxist abusing Marxist into general use. We close with a little bouquet of chauvinism and chauvinist to give you some indication of the range of the words' application in current use. (We assure you that male chauvinism and female chauvinism are in frequent use, though we do not show them here.) • ... English is the world's great pickpocket of language. It borrows pretty or useful words from every other tongue It would be daft not to make use of our great wealth because of linguistic chauvinism — Howard 1980 • If there should be life on the moon, we must begin by fearing it It says something about our century, our attitude toward life ... our human chauvinism —Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell, 1974 • ... this is a matter of social politics (and, he might well have added, of heterosexual chauvinism) — John Fowles, Saturday Rev., July 1980 • They may not have been nearly as slow and stupid as we, in our mammalian chauvinism, always assumed —Georgess McHargue, N. Y. Times Book Rev., 13 Nov. 1983 • ... this book is the perfect tool for combating the prejudices of Western art chauvinists —Ralph Novak, People, 25 Mar. 1985 • ... a beleaguered, defiant community of New York chauvinists —Richard Corliss, Time, 20 Feb. 1984 • Who are the "health chauvinists" you rail against? —James Gorman, People, 21 Mar. 1983 • ... might please even the most adamant... culinary chauvinists —Jay Jacobs, Gourmet, December 1982 |
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