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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  167
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 grammatical incorrectness of the "two-noun phrases" mentioned in Paragraph 3 implies that________.
选项 A、the word "female" is only used on clinical occasions
B、gender should be considered when we describe jobs
C、a "woman scientist" means an entirely abnormal scientist
D、women are still subtly identified as outsiders in certain fields
答案D
解析 根据题干关键词grammatical incorrectness和two-noun phrases可以定位到第三段第二句In fact，these peculiar two—noun phrases are grammatically incorrect。从该段上下文可知，“两个名词称谓”常常用于男性主导的行业，并且这种语法错误只存在于用来描述女性的称谓当中，而不存在于用来描述男性称谓当中，这说明在这些领域中，女性常常被看作是局外人，故选D“在某些领域，女性仍然被看作局外人”正确。第三段第四句指出Some protest that the word “female” sounds clinical，这是某些抗议者的观点，且作者下文反驳了该观点，故排除选项A；本文的主旨是：在描述一个人时，需要用性别中立的语言，而不是要刻意关注这个人的性别，B项违背了全文主旨，故排除；第三段第三句指出unless we mean that a “woman scientist” is somehow an entirely different creature than a normal scientist(如果不这样修饰，我们所说的“女科学家”在某种程度上讲就是完全不同于正常科学家的另一种生物了)，本句并不是说女科学家不正常，实则是在表达，我们常说的“女科学家”其实是一种带有偏见的称呼，故排除C项。
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