4.0558 What is _foreign_? (3/55)
Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Tue, 2 Oct 90 22:02:00 EDT
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 0558. Tuesday, 2 Oct 1990.
(1) Date: Monday, 1 Oct 1990 23:03:57 EDT (6 lines)
From: "Patrick W. Conner" <U47C2@WVNVM>
Subject: 4.0550 MetaDiscussion: Writing Criticism; US-Centricity
(2) Date: 2 October 1990 09:04:16 CDT (28 lines)
From: "Michael Sperberg-McQueen 312 996-2477 -2981" <U35395@UICVM>
Subject: Eisinger's inquiry
(3) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 90 10:38:00 EST (21 lines)
From: Michael_Kessler.Hum@mailgate.sfsu.edu
Subject: ASCII Ethnocentrism
(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Monday, 1 Oct 1990 23:03:57 EDT
From: "Patrick W. Conner" <U47C2@WVNVM>
Subject: 4.0550 MetaDiscussion: Writing Criticism; US-Centricity (3/72)
Mark...
...FRODO was invented by a fat fellow at Oxford...
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------37----
Date: 2 October 1990 09:04:16 CDT
From: "Michael Sperberg-McQueen 312 996-2477 -2981" <U35395@UICVM>
Subject: Eisinger's inquiry
I'm not going to touch SATs or Frodo (though the latter, at least, is
certainly not a US-only topic and was raised by one of our esteemed
Canadian colleagues), but thought I'd take a stab at defining
"foreign-language word processor". I always thought it would be a word
processor with faciliities for work on languages other than the national
language of the (a) developers or (b) user or (c) machine's character
set. In Germany, a word processing program with good facilities for
handling French or Danish would be a 'foreign-language word processor'
-- in France, one that can handle German or Danish. Judging by the heat
of his inquiry, I infer that Mr. Eisinger feels that the term "foreign
language" marginalizes non-Anglophone languages and their speakers. But
since no language spoken by any subscriber to this list is likely to
lack a word for "foreign", the concept certainly does not seem
ethnocentric to me. And since the current condition of the computer
industry includes a striking bias toward either English or the national
language of the country in which a machine is sold, I should have
thought the problem of finding good facilities for handling
"languages-other-than-the-one-the-software-developers-speak" is of
general, not parochial, interest.
Perhaps not.
-Michael Sperberg-McQueen
University of Illinois at Chicago
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------31----
Date: Tue, 2 Oct 90 10:38:00 EST
From: Michael_Kessler.Hum@mailgate.sfsu.edu
Subject: ASCII Ethnocentrism
As an "apatride" (and analogously might be considered "alingual"
rather than "bilingual") who is and will remain a "foreigner" in any
target language, I apologize for using the term "Foreign Language word
processor," only because it offended, not because it is offensive.
However, accents are "foreign" to ASCII, as are all non-Roman alphabets,
not to speak of the Chinese character system. I guess we will have to
live with what started as American provincialism--and is obviously
perceived as a form of imperialism by Eisinger--until something better
comes up. ISCII, anyone?
But I have a nagging feeling that the complaint about all the
hundreds of unconsciously ethnocentric comments have been offset by the
little pleasures that may have been generated when reading "our"
jeremiads on the lack commitment to foreign language education in this
(i.e. the U.S.) country.
Michael Kessler@HUM.SFSU.EDU