Anathema

Two Interesting Items off Compuserve news
Your Writing Reveals Something Personal

How you write--that is, how you string together verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs to form a sentence like this one--bears an invisible stamp that actually reveals your gender.
Women use more pronouns: I, you, she, he, their, myself. Women write about people and relationships.
Men focus on words that identify or determine nouns: a, the, that. Men also use words that quantify those nouns: one, two, more. Men write about things.

This is the word from researchers at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, who developed a computer program that uses a simple algorithm to analyze writing style and determine the author's gender, reports Nature News Service. Apparently, at some deep, unconscious level, we can't hide who we are. Just by scanning key words and syntax, the computer program is 80 percent accurate at detecting if a nonfiction book or novel was written by a man or a woman. As Nature News says, the program confirms the stereotypes we have about the differences in language use by men and women. Men really do talk more about objects, while women focus more on relationships. Men categorize. Women personalize. Men have an informational style. Women have an involved style.

Led by Moshe Koppel, the Israeli researchers tested their algorithm on 566 English-language works in numerous genres both fiction and nonfiction that were primarily published after 1975 and were able to correctly ID the author's gender 80 percent of the time. One text that fooled the program was Kazuo Ishiguro's "The Remains of the Day." But the idea that a computer can determine one's gender is creating quite a fuss in some academic quarters. Koppel said when he submitted his research for publication to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, he was rejected "on ideological grounds."

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You Won't Believe Who Cussed In Public

If you think everyday language--from the playground to the TV sitcom--has fallen into the gutter, you ain't heard nothin', baby! The foul language and public name-calling hurled around on the streets of Elizabethan England from 1500 to 1700 was far worse than anything we hear today. According to new research from a University of Warwick historian, the language used then was brimming with offensive sexual insults that were considerably more lewd than anything heard on today's broadcast media. In fact, the exchanges were so entertaining and bawdy, they were dubbed "street theater." Women were the worst offenders. Why? It gave them power.

Gossipmongering and heated public exchanges were weapons used by women to wield power and influence in a male-dominated society where they were often excluded, according to University of Warwick history professor Bernard Capp who has traced the history of Elizabethan street theater in a book called "When Gossips Meet." He says that public name-calling by women was used to demoralize an adversary, trigger damaging gossip throughout the neighborhood, and turn public opinion against the alleged offender.

The No. 1 insult: Calling a woman a whore. Such a charge of prostitution undermined a woman's social and moral standing. Says Capp, "Massive overuse inevitably weakened the impact of 'whore' as a term of abuse, but speakers were able to draw on a rich lexicon of synonyms, such as jade, quean, baggage, harlot, drab, filth, flirt, gill, trull, dirtyheels, draggletail, flap, naughty-pack, slut, squirt, and strumpet, generally heightened by adjectives such as arrant, base, brazenfaced, or scurvy." Another favorite taunt was to imply that the other woman was afflicted with a venereal disease, especially syphilis or "the pox" as it was called. This quote was found in church court papers from the 17th century: "At Bury St Edmunds Faith Wilson told her neighbour in 1619 to 'pull up your muffler higher and hide your pocky face, and go home and scrape your mangy arse.'"

Capp says Elizabethan women always hurled their insults in public before numerous witnesses as a way of maintaining social control. When a person was the subject of gossip, it restricted her behavior. This gave the gossiper some control over straying husbands, abusive employers, or sexually disreputable women. In addition, women would form gossip groups or networks of close friends, which allowed them to establish a social identity outside the home and provide emotional and practical support during disputes with husbands and neighbors.

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