6.0179 Rs: TextCrit Challenge; Foucault; Guys (3/64)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Mon, 3 Aug 1992 17:31:48 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 6, No. 0179. Monday, 3 Aug 1992.


(1) Date: Wed, 29 Jul 92 19:42:22 EDT (15 lines)
From: Eric Rabkin <USERGDFD@UMICHUM.BITNET>
Subject: 6.0165 Textual Criticism Challenge

(2) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 17:22 EST (12 lines)
From: JSCHWAR@opie.bgsu.edu
Subject: Re: 6.0175 Foucault Quote

(3) Date: Sat, 1 Aug 92 17:40:52 MDT (37 lines)
From: George Lang <GLANG@vm.ucs.UAlberta.CA>
Subject: Guys

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 92 19:42:22 EDT
From: Eric Rabkin <USERGDFD@UMICHUM.BITNET>
Subject: 6.0165 Textual Criticism Challenge (1/35)

> "Imagine a medieval library with dozens of copies of Aristotle's "On
> Comedy", all slightly different. Such differences, which came about
> because the monks made errors when copying, can be useful. By studying
> them you can see the order in which the copies were made.
A LOT of people would like to study them...since, apparently, they
don't exist. That makes the work just a bit tricky, no?

Eric Rabkin esrabkin@umichum.bitnet
Department of English esrabkin@um.cc.umich.edu
University of Michigan office: 313-764-2553
Ann Arbor MI 48109-1045 dept : 313-764-6330
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------24----
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 17:22 EST
From: JSCHWAR@opie.bgsu.edu
Subject: Re: 6.0175 Qs: Guide to Handbook Writing; Foucault Quote (2/34)

The Foucault text Debra Castillo is looking for is "Of Other Spaces"
Diacritics, Spring 1986: 22-27, is it not? This is the only place I know
where MF discusses heterotopias...
Jeff Schwartzz
Dept. of Popular Culture
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green OH 43402
jschwar@opie.bgsu.edu
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------47----
Date: Sat, 1 Aug 92 17:40:52 MDT
From: George Lang <GLANG@vm.ucs.UAlberta.CA>
Subject: Guys

From: George Lang
Romance Languages
University of Alberta

The dilemma "you guys / you all" is haunted by questions of both gender and
hierarchy. Gender first, if you please. I haven't had time to read Hackett on
the "Ambivalence of Guy" but while it is possible to interpret the application
of "guys" to "dolls" as gender free, it is equally possible to see it as just
another of the many cases in which the male marked term is applied rather
perfunctorily to both genders (which is why some might prefer "you'all"). But
I won't further open that can of worms in these narrow confines. As for
hierarchy, all these intimate or informal plurals in English, German, etc.
(the most charming known to me is Dutch _jullie_) derive from the fact that
not everyone gets to be a Thou, or conversely, there are sometimes groups of
Thou's we want to reach out to, and make feel special. I suspect that the
first case is operative, that lust for status and prestige best explains the
emergence of informal-formal distinctions where there were none provided in
the paradigm.

Which leads to a speculative question of the sort in bad odor among linguists
these days, and which I ask of "you all" out there. Do we have any evidence of
(dare I say it?) egalitarian societies of Indo-European language in which ad
hoc informals were not necessary because all _Others_ were on equal footing?
Of course there are the Quakers, but I'm thinking, with all due respect, of a
bigger scale. Was the proto-society that invented the person-number paradigm
free of formality? This leads to a second question. What has happened in
Esperanto? Has its person-number paradigm been supplemented (subverted?) by
informal plurals, themselves a necessity if formality usurps the plural?

George Lang Romance Languages University of Alberta <GLANG@vm.ucs.ualberta.ca>

George Lang
GLANG@VM.UCS.UALBERTA.CA