| 词组 | person |
| 释义 | person 1. See people, persons. 2. One of the more noticeable outgrowths of the concern about sexism in language during the 1970s and beyond has been the coinage of compound terms in which the terminal element -man (as in draftsman) and sometimes -woman (as in chairwoman) is replaced by -person. A few of those compounds were enthusiastically adopted by those endeavoring to be nonsexist: chairperson, anchorperson, spokesperson, for instance, are now well established. Critical opinion of such compounds in the press and in usage books has been chiefly negative and chiefly written by men. Perhaps the hostile attitude of commentators has helped winnow out the weakest of such proposed compounds, but the most useful have persevered in use widely enough to gain admission to dictionaries. Bolinger 1980 observes that there is a tendency in actual use for the new compound, such as chairperson or spokesperson, to be applied chiefly to women, so that where once we had spokesman-spokeswoman we now begin to find spokesman-spokesperson. This tendency— and our files suggest it is only a tendency, not an accomplished fact—has also turned some women against some of the -person compounds. The disaffection of women with chairperson and anchorperson has probably furthered the development of chair and anchor as replacements for the compound forms, but we have not spotted a spokes yet. Janis 1984 notes the effect of the employment ads on such usages. Many employers are zealous to avoid the suggestion of bias, and such compounds as draftsperson exist chiefly because of their frequency of use in the help-wanted pages. Janis also notes that many open compounds such as delivery person are also used. He thinks these should be avoided, but the peculiar requirements of the help-wanted pages are likely to keep many of them in use. Unless you are constrained by particular circumstances, you are free to use or avoid compounds such as spokesperson as you wish. If you do choose to use them, we suggest that you check with a recent dictionary or two to be sure that the compound you have picked is in current use. See also sexism. |
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