After yesterday's heat (84 degrees inside my house, since I have no air conditioning) I was tempted to write an entry about how hot weather can cause the melting of all thought in a susceptible brain. Fortunately, I got a different idea this afternoon when passing the dollar shop with my kids. There was a pair of rather ridiculous-looking bear balloons in the window, one pink, one blue, reading "It's a girl!" and "It's a boy!" respectively. When I explained that pink is generally considered a baby girl color, and blue a baby boy color, both of them asked me, "Why?"
Oh, boy.
At the time I said there was no real reason, but that was just the way people usually felt about pink and blue; since then I've looked it up online. The most interesting of the answers I found can be found here:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=238733
This answer seems well researched and confirms my general impression that fashion is pretty much arbitrary, despite its obvious strength. To give you a sense of what you'll find if you go there, "digsalot" explains that pink used to be considered a boy's color (1914 and earlier) because it was considered to be a watered-down version of red, which was also considered masculine. Blue, by contrast, was associated with the Virgin Mary, and thus considered feminine. The current bias didn't solidify until the 1950's.
Culture has a lot to do with the emotions and situations associated with colors. Take the association between red and masculinity, explained in the above discussion - it applies to America, and to many Western countries, but not to Japan. In Japan, red is a feminine color. Traditional kimono for young girls often are red, or contain the color red. When people are divided into a boys' team and a girls' team for competition, they are generally labeled the "red" team and the "white" team - the red being the girls, and the white the boys.
White is the color of mourning in China, while black has been used for mourning in America, and in England since at least Shakespeare's time (in Twelfth Night, the lady Olivia wears all black). When I Googled mourning colors, I found the following quote at the url http://chestofbooks.com/reference/Dictionary-of-Dry-Goods/Mourning.html :
"In China, white is invariably the color adopted for mourning; in Turkey, blue or violet; in Egypt, yellow; in Ethiopia, brown. Persia adopts pale brown; Burmah, yellow; Tartary, deep blue; Asia-Minor, sky blue. The Spartan and Roman ladies mourned in white; and the same color prevailed formerly in Castile on the death of their princes. Kings and cardinals mourn in purple. Each people have their reasons for the particular color which they affect: white is supposed to denote purity; yellow that death is the end of human hopes - in reference to leaves when they fall, and flowers when they fade, which become yellow. Brown denotes the earth, whither the dead return. Black, the privations of life, as being the the privation of light. Blue expresses the happiness which it is hoped the deceased will enjoy in the land beyond the skies; and purple or violet, sorrow on the one side and hope on the other, as being a mixture of black and blue. "
I can't help but be impressed by the variety of symbolisms associated with colors. Color symbolism is a great cultural dimension to add to a science fiction or fantasy world. In my Varin world, many castes are associated with colors (servants with black, soldiers with red, artisans with light gray). C.J. Cherryh's The Faded Sun trilogy used color symbolism for the castes of the mri people (black for the Kel warriors, gold for the scholarly Sen, and blue for the Kath women and children). A more unusual appearance of color is the pink mortar used to cement keystones in LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness - it turns out to have been mixed with blood instead of water. Cool and creepy to me!
Someday I hope I can have a more in-depth discussion of culture and colors with my kids - but for now I'm happy to have had the chance to share my thoughts here.
Upcoming posts at TTYU: education, nicknames
Friday, August 29, 2008
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Swearing (dash it all!)
This topic came to me thanks to K. Richardson, whom I encountered on the forum at the Critters critique website. Many of you probably know it, but if you don't, and you're seeking critique for works of science fiction, fantasy, or horror, it's a great place to start. The question K. had was how to get her aliens to swear without using swear words from our own world, yet not have the substituted words sound silly.
I would start by asking, "what is swearing for?" Here are some of its purposes in our world:
1. to express emotion in moments of extreme stress or pain
2. to express dissatisfaction (a less extreme version of #1, I think)
3. to give evidence that one is telling the truth ("I swear by the sword of my father, Domingo Montoya")
4. to get attention (over a wide range - everything from making a word stand out to emotionally injuring someone)
5. to express alignment with particular social groups
Here's an example of how a difference in degree on #4 can cause trouble cross-culturally. I come from a cultural group in which the form of swearing I'd call "ugly words" is used to get attention and injure people emotionally. My husband comes from one where the same words are used to draw attention and even give a certain spice of fun to what is said. So when we first met, and before I figured out the difference, I'd be regularly appalled at what was coming out of the mouth of this otherwise entirely nice (and very interesting) guy.
If you're creating an alien society, you can always go with a model that has your aliens using swearing for similar purposes - but of course, the parameter is available to be played with, so there's no need to hold back!
Next, I'd ask about content. Different cultures use different kinds of swearing content, but these can include religious references, scatological or sexual references, ridicule of others by comparison with animals, etc. Some swear words (like the old fashioned "zounds!") are derived from religious sources but have been euphemized (in this case from the expression, "God's wounds!") to avoid blasphemy.
So back to the aliens. Religion-based swearing is going to depend on what their religion is, whether it has the good vs. evil dichotomy, and how their cosmology works. From the point of view of the hypothetical Gegogian, what would be a fate worse than death? And under what circumstances might someone wish it on someone else? If you're looking for ugly words, then what do these people consider ugly? Are sexual body parts considered taboo in the society, and would they be used for expletive purposes? If someone wants to swear truthfulness, what object or concept do they value so highly that they would not want to sully it by lying under oath?
If you're going to pepper your dialogue with swear words or phrases the way we do in English, it's good to keep them short. But if you want to expand the cultural role of swearing and turn it into a lengthy trash-talking contest, then by all means elaborate them. Personally I would hope such a contest would be relevant to the main conflict of a story, though, and not just there for pyrotechnics!
Tonight I don't have a lot of examples on hand from established fiction - I welcome comments, so tell me if you thought swearing was handled well, or in a funny way, or in a less than optimal way, in any of the books you've read. In my own writing I have one culture where they use wordless sounds for extreme emotion, and insult people by talking about their undesirable physical behaviors. I have another where people are expected to swear by one of a family of deities, and which one to use depends on how the situation aligns with the personality and job of the deity in question.
Exploring swearing and its cultural underpinnings is a great way to give spice and dimension to a world.
I would start by asking, "what is swearing for?" Here are some of its purposes in our world:
1. to express emotion in moments of extreme stress or pain
2. to express dissatisfaction (a less extreme version of #1, I think)
3. to give evidence that one is telling the truth ("I swear by the sword of my father, Domingo Montoya")
4. to get attention (over a wide range - everything from making a word stand out to emotionally injuring someone)
5. to express alignment with particular social groups
Here's an example of how a difference in degree on #4 can cause trouble cross-culturally. I come from a cultural group in which the form of swearing I'd call "ugly words" is used to get attention and injure people emotionally. My husband comes from one where the same words are used to draw attention and even give a certain spice of fun to what is said. So when we first met, and before I figured out the difference, I'd be regularly appalled at what was coming out of the mouth of this otherwise entirely nice (and very interesting) guy.
If you're creating an alien society, you can always go with a model that has your aliens using swearing for similar purposes - but of course, the parameter is available to be played with, so there's no need to hold back!
Next, I'd ask about content. Different cultures use different kinds of swearing content, but these can include religious references, scatological or sexual references, ridicule of others by comparison with animals, etc. Some swear words (like the old fashioned "zounds!") are derived from religious sources but have been euphemized (in this case from the expression, "God's wounds!") to avoid blasphemy.
So back to the aliens. Religion-based swearing is going to depend on what their religion is, whether it has the good vs. evil dichotomy, and how their cosmology works. From the point of view of the hypothetical Gegogian, what would be a fate worse than death? And under what circumstances might someone wish it on someone else? If you're looking for ugly words, then what do these people consider ugly? Are sexual body parts considered taboo in the society, and would they be used for expletive purposes? If someone wants to swear truthfulness, what object or concept do they value so highly that they would not want to sully it by lying under oath?
If you're going to pepper your dialogue with swear words or phrases the way we do in English, it's good to keep them short. But if you want to expand the cultural role of swearing and turn it into a lengthy trash-talking contest, then by all means elaborate them. Personally I would hope such a contest would be relevant to the main conflict of a story, though, and not just there for pyrotechnics!
Tonight I don't have a lot of examples on hand from established fiction - I welcome comments, so tell me if you thought swearing was handled well, or in a funny way, or in a less than optimal way, in any of the books you've read. In my own writing I have one culture where they use wordless sounds for extreme emotion, and insult people by talking about their undesirable physical behaviors. I have another where people are expected to swear by one of a family of deities, and which one to use depends on how the situation aligns with the personality and job of the deity in question.
Exploring swearing and its cultural underpinnings is a great way to give spice and dimension to a world.
Will you take a stand on gender?
The topic of gender seems quite appropriate to the day following Hillary Clinton's speech at the Democratic convention. She certainly puts a spotlight on the issue of gender conflict in its current form.
Modern-day feminism (or post-feminism?) and women's liberation have put an interesting twist on the portrayal of women in fiction. Particularly tricky (to my mind) must be the task of writing historical fiction in which women must be portrayed as era-appropriate, yet continue to satisfy the needs of modern reader.
In fantasy and science fiction, we don't have to follow as many strict requirements on how gender is portrayed. My gut feeling is that many modern and futuristic societies in SF these days tend to aim for gender equality. In the Harry Potter books, for example, gender equality in witchcraft was not dicussed as an issue of contention, but two of the founders of Hogwarts were female, and witches generally were considered to have as much power as men (go, Professor McGonagall!). It's a gender balance intended to be unremarkable to the reader, yet which at the same time reflects a healthy level of idealism, in that it is more even than our current real world balance. Then of course there's the other extreme, that of creating a very remarkable alteration in gender roles. There have been the Star Trek societies where women dominate, or those where gender role differentiation itself is considered evil.
If you really want to see a gender portrayal that will knock you on your ear and make you think, go read Ursula K. LeGuin's famous book, The Left Hand of Darkness. It's often described as feminist SF, but it's not strident, and I don't get the feeling that it's out to shove female advancement in anyone's face. It simply sets up a beautifully three-dimensional humanoid culture in which people have no gender most of the time, except for a period called kemmer when sexual situations will cause their genders to differentiate in one direction or the other. LeGuin takes base assumptions of gender physiology and expands them into an entire internally consistent cultural system complete with folk tales, gender taboos not at all like our own, etc. and then plops a Human male negotiator down in the middle of it, providing readers with a unique experience of culture shock. There are many reasons why this book won so many awards. I have always loved Ursula LeGuin's writing, and I even made my husband read this book.
I'd like at this point to add another ingredient to writerly thought processes: that of demographics, and demographic pressures. Which is to say, if you're going to pick a particular way of portraying gender roles (assuming there are any and you aren't trying to redesign such concepts from scratch), you might want to consider how external pressures from environment and society influence gender roles.
Say you have a group of beings divided into childbearing, and non-childbearing genders. Their society will flex adaptively to allow childbearing, and childrearing, to occur most productively and effectively for its needs.
If children are born helpless, mothers will most likely be expected to take care of them; however, if those mothers have a tendency to want to eat them, fathers might have a key societal role in removing them from the danger zone and sending the mothers off to find food.
If the society is agrarian and of relatively low-technology, then lots of backs and arms will be required to maintain food productivity, and the burden of childbearing will tend to be higher because more children are important for optimal survival (this may also come along with cultural restrictions on sexual activity not geared toward the production of children).
If there are many dangers in the environment, non-childbearers will generally take the role of protecting childbearers from those dangers – this can take the form of the hunter-gatherer division of labor, but the actual form of division in an SF society can differ based on the specific conditions you're setting up.
In a society with a high degree of complexity, gender roles can diverge culturally, so that some societal groups believe childbearers must be protected and others believe they must be treated more equally with non-childbearers. This will depend on the nature of the demographic pressures. Take for example the society portrayed by Margaret Atwood in The Handmaid's Tale. That was a case where male/female was less important than childbearer/non-childbearer, because most women had become infertile. And as a result, the childbearers were heavily oppressed by the leaders of the society who wanted it to survive: they were expected to do almost nothing but attempt to bear children. In my own society of Varin, the groups that experience the most gender differentiation are the oppressed caste, which seeks to protect its women from harm but believes there is no difference in the ability of men and women to work equally when no children are involved, and the noble caste, which is inbred and shrinking, and thus subjects its women to unnaturally extreme childbearing pressure.
There are a lot more directions one could go with a gender discussion, but this will be it for me for today. I welcome any comments, questions or suggestions on where to take the issue next.
Upcoming posts at TTYU: swearing, schooling/education
Modern-day feminism (or post-feminism?) and women's liberation have put an interesting twist on the portrayal of women in fiction. Particularly tricky (to my mind) must be the task of writing historical fiction in which women must be portrayed as era-appropriate, yet continue to satisfy the needs of modern reader.
In fantasy and science fiction, we don't have to follow as many strict requirements on how gender is portrayed. My gut feeling is that many modern and futuristic societies in SF these days tend to aim for gender equality. In the Harry Potter books, for example, gender equality in witchcraft was not dicussed as an issue of contention, but two of the founders of Hogwarts were female, and witches generally were considered to have as much power as men (go, Professor McGonagall!). It's a gender balance intended to be unremarkable to the reader, yet which at the same time reflects a healthy level of idealism, in that it is more even than our current real world balance. Then of course there's the other extreme, that of creating a very remarkable alteration in gender roles. There have been the Star Trek societies where women dominate, or those where gender role differentiation itself is considered evil.
If you really want to see a gender portrayal that will knock you on your ear and make you think, go read Ursula K. LeGuin's famous book, The Left Hand of Darkness. It's often described as feminist SF, but it's not strident, and I don't get the feeling that it's out to shove female advancement in anyone's face. It simply sets up a beautifully three-dimensional humanoid culture in which people have no gender most of the time, except for a period called kemmer when sexual situations will cause their genders to differentiate in one direction or the other. LeGuin takes base assumptions of gender physiology and expands them into an entire internally consistent cultural system complete with folk tales, gender taboos not at all like our own, etc. and then plops a Human male negotiator down in the middle of it, providing readers with a unique experience of culture shock. There are many reasons why this book won so many awards. I have always loved Ursula LeGuin's writing, and I even made my husband read this book.
I'd like at this point to add another ingredient to writerly thought processes: that of demographics, and demographic pressures. Which is to say, if you're going to pick a particular way of portraying gender roles (assuming there are any and you aren't trying to redesign such concepts from scratch), you might want to consider how external pressures from environment and society influence gender roles.
Say you have a group of beings divided into childbearing, and non-childbearing genders. Their society will flex adaptively to allow childbearing, and childrearing, to occur most productively and effectively for its needs.
If children are born helpless, mothers will most likely be expected to take care of them; however, if those mothers have a tendency to want to eat them, fathers might have a key societal role in removing them from the danger zone and sending the mothers off to find food.
If the society is agrarian and of relatively low-technology, then lots of backs and arms will be required to maintain food productivity, and the burden of childbearing will tend to be higher because more children are important for optimal survival (this may also come along with cultural restrictions on sexual activity not geared toward the production of children).
If there are many dangers in the environment, non-childbearers will generally take the role of protecting childbearers from those dangers – this can take the form of the hunter-gatherer division of labor, but the actual form of division in an SF society can differ based on the specific conditions you're setting up.
In a society with a high degree of complexity, gender roles can diverge culturally, so that some societal groups believe childbearers must be protected and others believe they must be treated more equally with non-childbearers. This will depend on the nature of the demographic pressures. Take for example the society portrayed by Margaret Atwood in The Handmaid's Tale. That was a case where male/female was less important than childbearer/non-childbearer, because most women had become infertile. And as a result, the childbearers were heavily oppressed by the leaders of the society who wanted it to survive: they were expected to do almost nothing but attempt to bear children. In my own society of Varin, the groups that experience the most gender differentiation are the oppressed caste, which seeks to protect its women from harm but believes there is no difference in the ability of men and women to work equally when no children are involved, and the noble caste, which is inbred and shrinking, and thus subjects its women to unnaturally extreme childbearing pressure.
There are a lot more directions one could go with a gender discussion, but this will be it for me for today. I welcome any comments, questions or suggestions on where to take the issue next.
Upcoming posts at TTYU: swearing, schooling/education
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Interesting Links
This last week hit hard after our return from Chicago, and I'm having to rethink my blogging schedule temporarily. I've decided to start posting at the bottom of each entry the ideas I've had for upcoming posts, so that anyone who wants to share thoughts in advance, and potentially influence my post content, can feel free to do so. So look at the bottom of this entry for the first peek ahead.
Today I thought I'd put up a few interesting links, for anyone who's interested.
There's a discussion of body language on the Analog forum, and Tom Ligon mentioned a scientific approach to describing how the human body moves and gestures, called Laban Movement Analysis. You can read more on wikipedia or there's an official program site at http://www.labancan.org/index.htm
Also in that discussion Greg Ellis mentioned finding an online source about nonverbal gestures: http://members.aol.com/nonverbal2/diction1.htm
This one has some very interesting gesture-by-gesture descriptions, photos and examples from popular culture (such as quotes from Shakespeare and actors who favor a gesture).
I read an article recently about English spelling, but lost track of it and haven't quite been able to find it again, so anyone who's interested can check out this page, which contains some interesting information about historical elements preserved in spelling: http://www.nyu.edu/classes/copyXediting/Spelling.html
And of course if anyone knows of the article mentioned above, please remind me!
The last link is to a great resource about the nature of elements - a hard science topic, not a language/culture one, but still reflects on what the internet can do for making science accessible and enjoyable!
http://www.periodicvideos.com/#
Upcoming topics at TTYU: gender, swearing
Today I thought I'd put up a few interesting links, for anyone who's interested.
There's a discussion of body language on the Analog forum, and Tom Ligon mentioned a scientific approach to describing how the human body moves and gestures, called Laban Movement Analysis. You can read more on wikipedia or there's an official program site at http://www.labancan.org/index.htm
Also in that discussion Greg Ellis mentioned finding an online source about nonverbal gestures: http://members.aol.com/nonverbal2/diction1.htm
This one has some very interesting gesture-by-gesture descriptions, photos and examples from popular culture (such as quotes from Shakespeare and actors who favor a gesture).
I read an article recently about English spelling, but lost track of it and haven't quite been able to find it again, so anyone who's interested can check out this page, which contains some interesting information about historical elements preserved in spelling: http://www.nyu.edu/classes/copyXediting/Spelling.html
And of course if anyone knows of the article mentioned above, please remind me!
The last link is to a great resource about the nature of elements - a hard science topic, not a language/culture one, but still reflects on what the internet can do for making science accessible and enjoyable!
http://www.periodicvideos.com/#
Upcoming topics at TTYU: gender, swearing
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