Re: [tlug] Is linguistics OT at all? & HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux

[Shawn <javajunkie@example.com>]

> That definitely seems to be the case.  I guess many sys admins get bored 
> with their jobs, and decide to do linguistics on the side. ;-)
>
If they do, sociolinguistic competence(1) might be a good area to look 
into.

Take for example this excerpt from HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux (2):

"Since women are socialized to not be competitive and avoid conflict, and 
since they have low self-confidence to begin with, Linux and open source 
in general are even more difficult than most areas of computing for women 
to get and stay involved in."

I think it fails sociolinguistically .  To encourage women, you (IMHO) 
should _not_ say women "have low self-confidence"

but rather it should say

  'women are more modest in self apprasial of ability' or 'women are 
sometimes too modest in terms of self apprasial" or something like that.  
Saying women lack confidence is too negative and doesn't accomplish the 
writer's intent of making Linux a comfortable place for women as much as 
it could.  Saying someone lacks confidence is just not friendly.  Saying 
they are modest is totally different (again IMHO).  A slippery slope 
perhaps but I think you can all agree with me to some degree.
-- 
Shawn

1) Sociolinguistic competence is the ability to interpret the social 
meaning of the choice of linguistic varieties and to use language with the 
appropriate social meaning for the communication situation.
2) 
http://www.linux.com/howtos/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/x106.shtml#AEN127