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Friends, For personal and technical reasons I have been off-liine the last few days. I have, however, been making some progress on my dissertation and wish to take this moment, as we prepare for Shabbat tpo share the following note about how stereotyping is embedded in language with you. By way of introduction, let me just say that I had long felt discomforted by the continuing use of a form I had been calling "collective singular" to refer to First Nations, e.g., "the Mohawk". Because my dissertation is, in part, a study of what Indian leaders said in testimony before parliamentary committees in the 1970s and how Canadian parliamentarians responded to their testimony, the use of stereotypical language by the parliamentary respondents, as well as by journalists is quite central to my research. I was, therefore delighted to find, as you will see below, that several leading schoalrs of English usage have long had a concept called "zero plural". Those who find that the following note is excessively academic might keep in mind the nature of the primary audience of a doctoral dissertation. I would be grateful for any comments you might wish to offer. Shabbat shalom, Michael Posluns. P.S. One consequence of the technical problems which kept me offline has been that I have lost my recently developed address book. I am composing this list from an older source. * * * The Significance of Language A Note on The Collective Singular1 Even though the collective singular is a largely forgotten form today, its continued use in reference to First Nations represents a particular kind of stereotyping deeply embedded in the English language. Collective nouns2 are often used to express diversity while, sometimes, they are used to express similarity. The B.B.C. practice of connecting collective nouns as subject to plural verbs -- The Cabinet are meeting today -- seems to me to better convey what is likely to happen in the meeting than the singular form -- The Cabinet is meeting today -- preferred in North American usage. The form which I am calling here "the collective singular" is a different variation on the collective noun which is striking precisely for its emphasis on an expectation of unity which could only be founded on an image of the group in question as far more exotic than one's own group. It may have been common when Shaw was writing Pygmalion to formulate a question such as "Why can't the English learn to speak?" but it would be most unusual to refer to "the German", "the Canadian", or "the New Yorker" in contemporary English as though there were an archetypical German, Canadian or New Yorker whose thought or action could be taken as typical of his kind. (Such an expectation is necessarily in the masculine since the feminine represents a marker which either places a subject outside the archetype or else sets her up as an archetype of her own.) The continued use of such a collective singular form in reference to First Nations, not only among parliamentarians in the 1970s but, in fact, on the CBC in recent radio newscasts perpetuates a stereotype which serves as a straw Indian. Reporters and parliamentarians, alike, are then licensed by this construction, to be surprised at the diversity of thought within the Mohawk nation or the Cree nation, which can, then, be described as disunity. Lest there be any doubt that the continued use of the singular serves mainly a stereotyping function, it is worth noting that the Eeyou people of the James Bay and the lower Ungava Peninsula (aka Nouveau Quebec), needing English and French names for their political organization entitled that body as The Grand Council of the Crees of Quebec, and a corresponding French equivalent. Reporters nonetheless continue to refer to Matthew Coon Come, as the Grand Chief of the Cree of Quebec, or of the James Bay Cree. I offer this observation in this discussion on "the significance of language" because the use of the collective singular strikes me as one very clear way in which stereotypical thinking takes on its own unique English grammar, not only in regard to First Nations but generally in regard to those whom the speaker dislikes or distrusts. Cheyette's Constructions of 'the Jew' in English literature and society is, as the title might suggest replete with collective singular descriptions of 'the Jew' running through English literature from 1875 to 1945. I suggest that a review of English literature over the next 50 years would show a declining use of the collective singular in reference to the same subject group, while the practice has continued in reference to those whom the English were still, as late as the 1970's describing as 'the red Indian'. Crystal, in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language3 refers to this usage as "a 'zero' plural form", as distinct from the "regular plural". I have two rabbits They've been shooting rabbit. There is a clear difference in meaning. If the animals are being thought of as individuals, the plural form is used. If they are a category of game, they have a zero plural. It would be difficult to offer a better illustration of the argument that the 'zero plural', used in reference to groups of human beings, precisely by treating that group as a category sets up or maintains a stereotype. The concept of zero plural is also discussed in the article on "Plural" in The Oxford Companion at p.788-789, where it is said to occur "in the usage of hunters." Of course, in the context of fishing or hunting, it does not particularly matter which rabbit, deer, moose or fish one takes except in terms of certain highly objectified features: the size of the pike; the plumage of the pheasant; or, the rack of the moose. If the context other than hunting-and-gathering in which the zero plural occurs is in reference to First Nations and Aboriginal peoples there is hardly any need for further deconstruction of the continuation of this practice. On the contrary, the use of the zero plural can be taken as an embedded habit of categorizing for purposes of hunting; the impulse underlying federal government's continued insistence on a policy of extinguishment in the settlement of land claims is, possibly, better understood, through this study of embedded bias. At the very least, we can track the use of the zero plural as a marker for stereotypical thought by persons in positions of power, influence or authority, particularly in relation to those groups who have been disempowered as a function of state policy.
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