Feedback on Warm-Up 1: Mrs, Ms or Miss?
You've probably discovered by now that English is more formal than Swedish - and that written business is extremely formal! It didn't use to be that way. If you'd been born about 40 years earlier than you were, you'd have been brought up being even more formal than English.
One example of this is in the use of titles (like Mr or Dr). You can't *not* use them, because it would be too familiar to use someone's first name - doing that puts them on the same status level as a child or a pet. However, 'Mr' denotes only 'male', whilst the old alternatives to denote 'female', 'Mrs' and 'Miss' also give information about marital status. Back in the 1960s, when the feminist movement was getting going in earnest, feminists invented a new title for women, 'Ms', which only denotes 'female' - not marital status. There was a lot of (mostly male) resistance to this at first, but it was really computers that put paid to that. As long ago as 1982, when I applied for a US visa, there were only two alternatives for the title: Mr or Ms.
This is not to say that women don't still use 'Mrs' or 'Miss' to give messages. You'd never have got away with 'Ms. Thatcher', because Mrs Thatcher always made a big deal of her status as a wife. Missie Elliot also made a conscious choice of title … and it'd be hard to imagine 'The Prime of Ms Jean Brodie'. On the other hand, can you imagine the US Secretary of State being addressed as Miss Rice?
In other words, it's a minefield! The name in Warm-Up 1 was deliberately chosen to give you problems … When immigrants arrived in the States in the late 1800s, their names were often mangled deliberately by immigration officials to make them sound more English (e.g. Swanson instead of Svensson). Now, Britt-Inge lives in California - the land of eternal youth. Marital status can be a big issue there. Advertising that you're married or not married might convey subliminal messages about your youth and availability … or you might want to use your marital status as a weapon in the competition for the big prize.
My advice is to play safe, and use 'Ms'. However, don't take my word for it. An early message on this course is that the English-speaking world is diverse and hard to classify. Do you have any thoughts about this usage?
One example of this is in the use of titles (like Mr or Dr). You can't *not* use them, because it would be too familiar to use someone's first name - doing that puts them on the same status level as a child or a pet. However, 'Mr' denotes only 'male', whilst the old alternatives to denote 'female', 'Mrs' and 'Miss' also give information about marital status. Back in the 1960s, when the feminist movement was getting going in earnest, feminists invented a new title for women, 'Ms', which only denotes 'female' - not marital status. There was a lot of (mostly male) resistance to this at first, but it was really computers that put paid to that. As long ago as 1982, when I applied for a US visa, there were only two alternatives for the title: Mr or Ms.
This is not to say that women don't still use 'Mrs' or 'Miss' to give messages. You'd never have got away with 'Ms. Thatcher', because Mrs Thatcher always made a big deal of her status as a wife. Missie Elliot also made a conscious choice of title … and it'd be hard to imagine 'The Prime of Ms Jean Brodie'. On the other hand, can you imagine the US Secretary of State being addressed as Miss Rice?
In other words, it's a minefield! The name in Warm-Up 1 was deliberately chosen to give you problems … When immigrants arrived in the States in the late 1800s, their names were often mangled deliberately by immigration officials to make them sound more English (e.g. Swanson instead of Svensson). Now, Britt-Inge lives in California - the land of eternal youth. Marital status can be a big issue there. Advertising that you're married or not married might convey subliminal messages about your youth and availability … or you might want to use your marital status as a weapon in the competition for the big prize.
My advice is to play safe, and use 'Ms'. However, don't take my word for it. An early message on this course is that the English-speaking world is diverse and hard to classify. Do you have any thoughts about this usage?
posted by David Richardson at 3:58 AM
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