词典也能歧视人?而且还被3万人请愿要求做出改变。
词典君此刻的心情：
Maria Beatrice Giovanardi是伦敦的一个营销传播专家。夏天的某一天，她在网上查找有关女性收入的信息，当她在搜索栏里输入“女性”一词时，被跳出来的同义词惊到了，全都是贬损女性的，诸如碧池、泼妇、母驴、妓女、脆弱、唠叨等。
当时的截图 via Giovanardi
“I was like, 'What’s going on? Why are these the synonyms?,” Giovanardi, 28, told “Good Morning America.” “I don’t see myself like this as a woman.
Giovanardi告诉早安美国节目，“我当时的感觉就是‘啥玩意?为什么是这样的同义词?‘”“作为女性，我并不认为我是这样的人。”
“My girlfriends don’t speak like this so it’s a man’s point of view,” she recalled thinking.
她回忆道：“我的女朋友们也不会这样说话，所以这完全是男性视角。”
Is the dictionary sexist? Petition calls for Oxford English Dictionary to remove sexist terms for women (via abcnews)
Giovanardi看了看来源，发现这些信息的来源是牛津大学出版社。
As Giovanardi looked further into it, she saw more examples of what she described as sexist language, including using sentences like these as examples alongside the definition of women: "‘One of his sophisticated London women"; "Don't be daft, woman!" and "he wondered whether Billy had his woman with him."
随着进一步的探究，她发现了更多歧视性语言。比如词条下选择了这样的例子：“他精明世故的伦敦女人之一”、“别傻了，女人!”“他想知道比利是否带着他的女人”。
截图 via lexico.com
"If you look up 'man' you see sentences of what men can be doing as individuals, while with women you see sentences of women as an oppressed group, not as individuals," she said. "Their goal is to portray language but this has a very judgmental bias."
她说：“如果你去查‘男人‘这个词，例句都是男人作为个体在做什么事，而有关女人的句子都是被视为一个受压迫的群体，而不是独立的个人。”“他们的目的应该是描写语言，但这样的行为有很强的主观偏见。”
于是，Giovanardi去Change.org上发起了一个请愿，题为“改变牛津词典中‘女人’一词的性别歧视定义”。从六月至今，已经有近3万人签名支持。
图 via Giovanardi
这份请愿书已经引起了牛津大学出版社的注意，该出版社专门发布了一篇博客来回应请愿书。
图 via Oxford Dictionaries
The post specifies that the content around women called out by the petition comes from the Oxford Thesaurus of English and the Oxford Dictionary of English, which "aim to cover contemporary English usage and are accessible online in a variety of formats."
文中明确指出，请愿书中有关女性的内容的确来自《牛津同义词大词典》和《牛津英语词典》，“旨在涵盖当代英语用法，并可通过多种渠道在网上查找。”
"These texts are based on the methodologies of descriptive, corpus-based lexicography, meaning that editors analyse large quantities of evidence from real-life use to determine the meanings of words," the post explains in part. "If there is evidence of an offensive or derogatory word or meaning being widely used in English, it will not be excluded from the dictionary solely on the grounds that it is offensive or derogatory."
“这些文本是基于描述性的、基于语料库的词典编纂方法，这意味着编辑从现实生活中分析大量证据，以确定单词的含义，”文章解释道。“如果有证据表明冒犯性或贬低性的词语或含义在英语中广泛使用，则不会仅因其具有攻击性或贬义性而将其从词典中剔除。”
然而这样的解释并不能让Giovanardi满意，她说不管压力多大都会坚持下去，因为性别歧视是不可接受的。
"Our point is that sexism against someone is not acceptable and it is not okay to have definitions like these about women," she said. "We also want them to remove the sentences that denote women being the property of men, and there’s a lot of them, and make it more inclusive."
“我们的观点是，对某人的性别歧视是不可接受的，也不能对女性有这样的定义，”她说。“我们还希望他们删除那些把女性看做男性财产的诸多句子，让他们的例句库更具包容性。”
很多网友看到这个请愿表示简直是莫名其妙。
A: 就是这类事情让我觉得作为一个女人好尴尬。
B: 我也是。
简直是史上最糟的请愿了。这世上没有更紧迫的事要做了吗?我是说那些真正的问题。
把词从语言中删掉?
这是我听过最蠢的主意。
一个自称是语言学家和女权主义者的网友解释了为什么她不支持这个请愿：
这实际上是一个相当没用的建议。但即使不是这样，对此的愤怒也是不恰当的。游说字典使其定义符合你的政治偏好是不对的(这就是为什么我没有签名)。
你觉得被牛津词典的这个释义冒犯到了吗?
