It's the latest step in a push to challenge male-oriented surname traditions across the globe.

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It's the latest step in a push to challenge male-oriented surname traditions across the globe.

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Bleat
There is no end To where we begin Remind me again how Wet soft light embraces All the traces of what is Left and what we promise To defend
Inside the core A graceless wind of pain Departs to find itâs way out Into outer waves that send the Differences where melancholy leaves A markedness made absent to retreat Into our satiated breeze
Upon the face of a rose Lands the heart of a bee Where I findâŚ
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Markedness of Queer Sexual Orientations
âThe âinvisibilityâ of heterosexuality as a normative category of identity is a recurring motif in recent work on heterosexuality; its âunmarkedâ and ânaturalizedâ status is understood as serving to perpetuate its power as an identity which tends to be taken for granted and to pass unquestioned.â
- Rachel Carroll, Feminism, Queer Theory and Contemporary Fiction
Heterosexuality is unmarked in that it is the default or typical case. When first starting a book, tv show, or movie, consumers tend to perceive all of the characters as straight unless a character indicates otherwise. Heterosexual characters rarely say âIâm straightâ or verbalize the fact that they are attracted only to the opposite sex.
âHeterosexual identity is a different kind of thing from gay or lesbian identity. The two are not just different but equal possibilities; rather, one is marked with respect to the other. No one wears a button saying âhappy to be heterosexualâ. No one comes out as straight, or claims to speak on behalf of the âstraight communityâ. As the unmarked sexual identity, we might not expect heterosexuality to be signaled in the same way as homosexuality, linguistically or otherwise.â
- Deborah Cameron, Straight-talking: the sociolinguistics of heterosexuality
Queer sexual orientations, such as homosexuality or bisexuality, are marked in that they are atypical and not the default case. Fictional media have to depict or verbalize a queer characterâs sexual orientation in order for the character to be perceived that way. Markedness is not intrinsically negative, but the markedness of being queer in our society leads to the marginalization and oppression of LGBT people.
The markedness of queer sexual orientations makes the verbalization of queer identities a performative act, which I will examine next.
A thorough examination of the diverse ways in which the concept of markedness has been used and a discussion of how to better capture those ideas.
Excerpt :
Since it was first proposed by Nicholas Trubetzkoy and Roman Jakobson in the 1930s, the term 'markedness' has been very popular in linguistics. It was embraced by European structuralism, generative phonology, functional-typological linguistics, Chomskyan principles-and-parameters syntax, neo-Gricean pragmatics, Optimality Theory, first and second language acquisition, creole studies, and probably other research areas as well. In the course of this process, two things happened. First, not surprisingly, the term 'markedness' developed a multiplicity of sometimes widely diverging senses that linguists who use it are often not aware of. Secondly, 'markedness' lost its association with a particular theoretical approach and became established as an almost theory-neutral everyday term in linguistics. Even though most linguists will be happy to accept that 'markedness' has sometimes been used inappropriately, I expect many readers to be surprised that it should be possible to argue for the downright elimination of 'mark- edness' from linguists' theoretical arsenal.
Marked For Death
Many oppositional adjectives like hot and cold, or young and old, have no meaning whatsoever until someone puts them on a scale. Sometimes the scale is implied, sometimes itâs explicitly stated.Â
Example:
âItâs cold outsideâ implies that itâs colder than normal, or itâs colder than youâd like. It tells us absolutely nothing, however, about the actual temperature outside.
âSheâs twelve years oldâ helpfully includes the scale and tells us something about the actual age of the girl (sheâs twelve).Â
These binary oppositions generally have a marked word and an unmarked word. These are technical linguistic terms for fairly simple concepts. âBinary oppositionâ means a set of two words where one refers to the opposite of the other: up and down, hot and cold. An âunmarkedâ word is a word used to describe a position on the spectrum of the binary opposition which doesnât cause you to wonder why I used that word. A âmarkedâ word, then, is a word used to describe a position on the scale of the binary opposition which causes you to wonder why I used that word.Â
I said these were simple concepts. I was not lying. Sometimes, I get the impression that technical language is specifically invented to distance n00bs, which to me should be some sort of crime, at least in the field of philosophy. I use these words even though I donât like them. Donât ask me why. Iâm complicated; I have layers.
Example:
Letâs say the âspectrum of binary oppositionâ is human age. This spectrum will run from zero to around a hundred, and your two words will be âyoungâ and âoldâ.Â
âHe is eighty years oldâ is the unmarked form. This means there is nothing inherent about this sentence that would cause you to wonder why I phrased it like that. It doesnât carry any extra meaning apart from what it says.
âHe is eighty years youngâ is the marked form. There is a reason to ask why I used the word âyoungâ instead of âoldâ. It carries some extra meaning apart from what it says. In this case, I am pretending that age is a state of mind, and that being old isnât that bad (when clearly it is, or I wouldnât feel the need to use the marked form).
Markedness is a fascinating feature, not just of linguistics, but of psychology and sociology too. There is a sense of âthe defaultâ in these words which is often confused for racism, sexism, or some other Bad Thing.Â
Example:Â
A book refers to a gender-neutral example character as âhimâ throughout. This is taken as an example of sexism. However, the male words have long been established as the unmarked form for characters whose sex is unknown; the word âmankindâ has always unambiguously included women.
Referring to a gender-neutral example character as âsheâ is a marked form, and is specifically designed to convey information not contained in the sentence itself. Perhaps you want people to know that you are a feminist, or that you donât like conforming to expectations simply because they are expected of you. Whatever the reason, the effect is to take the reader out of the sentence, thereby possibly diminishing the impact of your writing (unless youâre aiming for this disjoint, in which case, well done).Â
Example:
Letâs say a card game manual has not established any sexes or genders, but includes the line: âThe player counts her cards.â Whether you intend it or not, the inclusion of âherâ is going to trip people up, and they will mentally digest this as âIâm a feminist, and the player counts the cards.â
Some authors try to straddle the fence and use âtheyâ, which can work, but it more usually takes the reader out of the narrative because readers are not accustomed to seeing plurals refer to singulars (unless youâre Elizabeth II).Â
You are entitled, as a human being, to have any opinion you like on this, but know that markedness runs deep in our language. One of these will sound more natural than the other two, no matter how you personally feel about it:
Someone goes to town and he comes back with some bread.Â
Someone goes to town and she comes back with some bread.
Someone goes to town and they come back with some bread.
Keep in mind, again, that this only applies to gender-neutral characters; if you have any reasons to suspect the gender/sex of the person, none of this applies.
You are communicating things all the time, through the words you choose and the words you do not choose. Be aware of the choices youâre making.Â
Watch your language.

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In two respects inanimate seems to be the more marked value of the animacy category. Animates are probably more frequently referred to than inanimates. I donât have a source for that, but it seems probable. So text frequency of animates is higher. And if number distinctions are made only on some nouns, they are always made on more animate nouns. Thatâs from Smith-Stark (1974) as cited in Corbett (1996). So animates show greater inflectional differentiation.
However, in terms of overt coding, all the examples I know of have animate as the overtly coded category. That is, animate is the one marked by an affix, while inanimate is marked by zero. And thatâs associated with markedness, not unmarkedness. For comparison, plural as opposed to singular shows all three markedness characteristics (lower text frequency, lower inflectional differentiation, overt coding); and ergative/accusative case as opposed to nominative/absolutive case has lower text frequency and overt coding at least (I donât know about inflectional differentiation in that case).
But I donât know many examples. PIE had a zero-marked neuter in the direct cases, Russian has animate nouns taking the same ending as a marked case (genitive) rather than an unmarked case (nominative) in the accusative, Spanish has a as a marker of animate direct objects. Thatâs all the examples I have (youâll notice theyâre all from the Wikipedia page). So are there any languages which mark animates by zero and inanimates by an affix? (And are they more common than those that do it the other way round? If they are, thereâs no problem; if not, then animacy doesnât have the usual markedness correlational bundle.)
I wonder if merfolk call their young girls just âmaidâ and ours âterrmaidsâ.
Nerdy teenagersâ deliberate avoidance of slang, for example, indexically displayed their remoteness from the trends not only of white youth culture but of black youth culture as well, since African American slang was a primary source of European American slang. While this was not necessarily an intended consequence, Example 1 provides evidence that nerds defined themselves in opposition to both coolness and blackness. Bob first utters the word blood (a term used by many African American boys at Bay City High) with stereotyped African American Vernacular English phonology and exaggerated intonation... Her marking of AAVE speakers in this example expresses the ideological distance between her identity and that of African American youth. Her return to her normal pronunciation in the second utterance of this word ... coincides with her attempt to provide a nonslang definition for the term. With this switch, coolness and blackness are recursively linked to each other and separated from the world of nerds
The Whiteness of Nerds: Superstandard English and Racial Markedness by Mary Bucholtz
an interesting read about markedness and nerds