Ms一词的由来.doc

Ms.一词的由来In the Nov. 10 1901 edition of The Sunday Republican of Springfield Mass. tucked away in an item at the bottom of Page 4 an unnamed writer put forth a modest proposal. “There is a void in the English language which with some diffidence we undertake to fill ” the writer began. “Every one has been put in an embarrassing position by ignorance of the status of some woman. To call a maiden Mrs. is only a shade worse than to insult a matron with the inferior title Miss. Yet it is not always easy to know the facts.”1901年11月10日，在马萨诸塞州斯布林菲尔德市的周日共和党人报（The Sunday Republican）第四页页脚的一则新闻中，一位匿名作家提出了一个温和的建议。“英语中有一片我们需要但又怯于填补的空白，”那位作家在文章开头这样写道。“由于忽视某些女性的身份地位，每个人都陷入了一种尴尬的境地。称呼一位少女为Mrs.比起用卑微的Miss来侮辱一名主妇也好不到哪儿去。不过想要一探究竟并非总那么容易。”How to avoid this potential social faux pas? The writer suggested “a more comprehensive term which does homage to the sex without expressing any views as to their domestic situation ” namely Ms. With this “simple” and “easy to write” title a tactfully ambiguous compromise between Miss and Mrs. “the person concerned can translate it properly according to circumstances.” The writer even gave a pronunciation tip: “For oral use it might be rendered as Mizz which would be a close parallel to the practice long universal in many bucolic regions where a slurred Mis does duty for Miss and Mrs. alike.”如何避免这种社交礼仪失误呢？该作者建议采用“一种更为周全的称呼，这种称呼一方面尊重女性，另一方面又不透露女性的婚姻状况”。这一称呼就是Ms.。利用这个“简洁”且“便于书写”的称呼一个介于Miss和Mrs.之间的圆滑且模棱两可的折中词，“便可根据场合选择更为适当的词来称呼相应的对象”。该作者甚至还给出了Ms.的发音提示：“这个词的发音应该是Mizz，接近许多乡下地方人们惯常的发音习惯，他们将Miss和Mrs.念成含混不清的Mis”。The item in the Springfield paper made a minor splash getting picked up and discussed over the next few weeks in other newspapers around the country from Iowa to Minnesota to Utah. As 1901 drew to a close however the Ms. proposal faded from the public eye though it seems to have made enough of an impression to lurk just below the radar for decades to come. In 1932 it reappeared: a letter writer in The New York Times wondered if “a woman whose marital status is in doubt” should be addressed as Ms or Miss. And in 1949 the philologist Mario Pei noted in his book “The Story of Language” that “feminists who object to the distinction between Mrs. and Miss and its concomitant revelatory features have often proposed that the two present-day titles be merged into a single one Miss (to be written Ms.).”斯布林菲尔德报（即周日共和党人报）上的这则新闻引发一阵小小的骚动，从爱荷华到明尼苏达再到犹他，全国各地的报纸都在接下来的几周内针对该报道发表了评论性文章。然而，到1901年年底，关于使用Ms.一词的建议渐渐淡出公众视野，不过它已积累了足够的人气，大可韬光养晦，在几十年后卷土重来。果然，到1932年，该提议再现江湖，纽约时报一位书信作家发问：是否应称呼“一位婚姻状况不明的女士”为Ms或Miss。在1949年，哲学家马里奥佩伊（Mario Pei）在他的书语言的故事（The Story of Language）中写道“女权主义者否认Mrs.和Miss间的差异以及伴随该差异的相关特征，故她们经常提议将这两个现代称谓合二为一，统一成Miss（书写形式为Ms.）”。The genesis of Ms. lay buried in newspaper archives until earlier this year when after much painstaking hunting through digitized databases I found The Sunday Republican article that started it all. A few years ago I stumbled upon a mention of the article in another newspaper The New Era of Humeston Iowa on Dec. 4 1901. Fred Shapiro the editor of “The Yale Book of Quotations ” then found an excerpt from The Sunday Republican article in The Salt Lake Tribune. After discovering that The Sunday Republican had recently been scanned and digitized by Readex a publisher of digital historical materials I was finally able to zero in on this forgotten document. 直到今年早些时候，深藏在陈年旧闻档案中关于Ms.一词的由来才被发掘。经过仔细搜索数字资料库，我发现是周日共和党人报最早刊登了此则报道。几年前，我偶然在1901年12月4日的爱荷华州赫姆斯顿市新时代报（The New Era）上看到一篇文章。后来，耶鲁名人名言语录（The Yale Book of Quotations）的编辑弗雷德夏皮洛（Fred Shapiro）在盐湖城论坛报（The Salt Lake Tribune）上看到一篇原载于周日共和党人报上的文章的节选。因为这些发现，一家数字历史文献出版商雷德克斯（Readex）于近日扫描周日共和党人报的所有文字档案，将其转化为电子资料。我也因此得以集中看到这些早已被世人所遗忘的宝贵资料。Though Pei identified the early proponents of Ms. as feminists the Republican writer (most likely a man) presented the argument for the title as one of simple etiquette and expediency. As the linguist Dennis Baron recounts in his 1986 book “Grammar and Gender ” these considerations remained the driving force in the 1950s when some guides to business correspondence offered Ms. as a stopgap solution. Fraily and Schnells “Practical Business Writing” of 1952 for instance recommended it as a title “that saves debating between Miss and Mrs.” Two years later Brown and Doriss “Business Executives Handbook” briefly noted that “a few business concerns now use Ms. ” Outside of secretarial circles however Ms. remained largely unknown.尽管佩伊指出，Ms.一词最初是由女权主义者提出的，但周日共和党人报那位作者（十有八九是一名男性）则辩解道，该词不过是一个礼节性称呼，也是（旨在替代Miss或Mrs.这类敏感词的）权宜之计。正如语言学家丹尼斯拜伦（Dennis Baron）在其1986年版的语法和性（Grammar and Gender）一书中提到的那样，“这些观点在上世纪50年代甚为流行，在当时一些针对商业信函的写作指南中就把Ms.一词作为解决女性称呼这一棘手问题的权宜之计。例如，弗莱利（Fraily）和施奈尔（Schnell）在1952年版的商业信函书写实践（Practical Business Writing）中写道，Ms.这一称谓“化解了应采用Miss还是Mrs.这一问题上的争论”。两年后，布朗（Brown）和桃瑞丝（Doris）在企业执行官手册（Business Executives Handbook）一书中简要提到“一些企业如今正使用Ms.一词（来称呼女性）”。然而，对于大多数不从事文书工作的人来说，Ms.依旧是一个相对陌生的词。It was certainly unknown in 1961 to Sheila Michaels a 22-year-old civil rights worker in New York City who one day spotted it on a piece of mail that her roommate received. In fact she initially took it as a typo albeit a felicitous one. Fiercely independent Michaels abhorred having her identity defined by marriage. Struck by Ms. she became a one-woman lobbying force for the title as a feminist alternative to Miss and Mrs. She even unwittingly replicated The Republicans rationale for pronouncing Ms. as “mizz ” since she had noticed this ambiguous spoken form when she was a child growing up in St. Louis.在1961年，对于居住在纽约的22岁的民权工作者席拉迈克尔斯（Sheila Michaels）来说，这个词自然是个生僻词。一天，她在室友收到的信件中偶然发现了这个单词。事实上，她起初以为这是个错别字，尽管它看起来还挺靠谱。席拉是个性独立且要强的女性，对于用婚姻状况来定义女性身份这一做法她自然心生厌恶。受到Ms.一词的启发，她踏上了独自游说之旅，呼吁用更具女权主义色彩的Ms.来替代先前的Miss和Mrs.。她甚至还在无意中重申了周日共和党人报中关于应把Ms.发音为mizz的理由。在密苏里圣路易斯（St. Louis）长大的她早就注意到这一常为人们所混淆的发音了。For several years her fellow activists evinced little interest. The turning point Michaels told me recently came when she was interviewed on the progressive New York radio station WBAI in late 1969 or early 1970. The program “Womankind” invited her on with other members of a radical group known simply as the Feminists and during a lull in the show she plunged into her impassioned plea for Ms. Her advocacy finally paid off. The following August when womens rights supporters commemorated the 50th anniversary of suffrage with the Womens Strike for Equality Ms. became recognized as a calling card of the feminist movement.在最初几年中，席拉的同仁们对她的倡议并不感兴趣。近日，她告诉我说，直到她接受先锋派纽约电台WBAI的采访时，大约是1969年年底或1970年年初，事情才有了转机。该电台一档名为“女类”（Womankind）的节目邀请她和来自一个名为“女权主义者”的激进团体的成员作为嘉宾。在节目间隙，席拉热切呼吁对Ms.一词的使用及推广。她的倡议最终被接纳。在随后的八月份，当女性权益支持者欢度女性为争取平等而举行的大罢工五十周年纪念时，Ms.被视作女权主义运动的标识。Just days before the national demonstration on Aug. 24 Gloria Steinem registered her approval in her “City Politic” column in New York magazine. “Personally ” she wrote “Im all in favor of the new form and will put it on all letters and documents.” Still she was uncertain about the pronunciation: “An airline clerk asked me Miss or Mrs.? on the phone and I was stumped. How the hell do you pronounce Ms.?” By the time Steinem and her colleagues introduced Ms. magazine in 1971 both the “miss” and “mizz” pronunciations were considered acceptable with “mizz ” the “bucolic” form in the 1901 proposal eventually winning out in commo