Date: Sun, 16 Jul 1995 07:32:48 PDT

From: tom creswell creswell[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CROWN.NET

Subject: Re: Woman/Lady



For what Virginia McDavid and I found to be the situation circa 1985, when

we were writing usage notes and synonymies for the Random House

Dictionary, Second Edition, Unabridged. See the Usage Paragraph sv

_lady_ and the Usage Paragraph and Synonymy sv _woman_ and

_-woman_. Upon re-reading, they seem to accurately define the present

situation with the two terms. Political correctness aside, the general current

practice seems to be as described.



Tom Creswell



---------------Original Message---------------

Weren't we discussing the differences between phrases like "lady doctor" and

"woman doctor" a while back? (If it was somewhere else, well, it *should* have

been here, too.)



Anyway, I was watching the Boston Red Sox/Texas Rangers (baseball) game

tonight, with Brent Mussberger and Joe Torre doing the commentary. As the

score got out of hand, the announcers started commenting (favorably) on the

increasing number of women in front office and public positions. At one point,

Torre noted that Boston has the first "lady p/a announcer" and the first "lady

assistant general manager". Mussberger immediately cut in, saying that you had

to say "woman p/a announcer", etc. Afterwards, he made a crack about PC, but

is did seem as if his correction was based on it 'sounding wrong' to say "lady

p/a announcer", and the PC came out of trying to articulate *why* it sounded

wrong.



PS for baseball fans: the score was *objectively* getting out of hand; no

partisanship intended.



PS for non-baseball fans: Mussberger is an experienced sportscaster and covers

a variety of sports; Torre is an ex-player, ex-manager, though he has been

involved in specifically baseball broadcasting between stints as a manager.



Alice Faber

faber[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]haskins.yale.edu





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