opinion

Bangert: Ban on ‘man’? Purdue silent as conservative media rips writing guidelines

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Something weird is up when Fox News personality Tucker Carlson’s smack talk about “fake degrees” and bans on certain words at Purdue University aren’t batted out of the air in two seconds flat.

The host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” picking up on rumblings in conservative online sites aimed at colleges as bastions of the liberal and politically correct, took a set of writing guidelines on Purdue’s Online Writing Lab site and twisted them into a supposedly new effort to ban the word “man” on the West Lafayette campus.

It all might have been comical, to a certain extent – except that it seems to have put Purdue over a barrel, somehow.

On Monday, Purdue was silent on the matter. Calls and messages from the J&C to the Online Writing Lab, the English Department and the College of Liberal Arts weren’t returned. On Monday evening, David Reingold, College of Liberal Arts dean, deferred, saying a university response could come as soon as Tuesday. As of Tuesday evening, that response hadn’t come.

FOLLOW-UP: Purdue silently scrubs writing tips after claims of campus ban on word ‘man’

Here’s where it started.

According to the Online Writing Lab site, used across campus and nationally as a free resource on writing well since 1994, something was changed Feb. 9 in a 10-page handout titled, “Appropriate Language: Overview.”

The revised page was first picked up 11 days later by Campus Reform, an online news aggregator that touts itself as a site that “exposes the liberal bias and abuse against conservatives on America’s colleges and universities.” (In a plea for funding that accompanies stories, Campus Reform tells its readers: “College campuses are no longer bastions of higher learning. They even silence conservative students with their attempts to suppress free speech.”)

For the most part, Campus Reform’s report was a fairly straight-up account of what the “Gender-biased Language” recommendations contained in the writing guide were, saying, “A widely-used online writing and grammar resource published by Purdue University encourages college students to avoid ‘the generic use of “man” and other words with masculine markers.’”

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The report by Campus Reform did not say what had been changed in a handout that is based on guidelines developed in 1975 and most recently revised in 2002 by the National Council of Teachers of English. Purdue didn’t return Campus Reform’s request for comments, according to the account.

But a search of cached versions of Purdue Online Writing Lab pages collected by the Internet Archive, a digital library known as the Wayback Machine, show that the guidelines are hardly new, dating back at least more than a decade.

Other media outlets, mainly ones that lean conservative, ran versions of the Campus Reform article during the week.

By Friday, Carlson, host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” had picked up on it and raised the stakes, calling it a move to ban the word “man” at Purdue.

In a segment labeled “Campus Craziness,” Carlson did a bit with Cathy Areu, publisher of Catalina Magazine. Areu played the foil, putting up half-hearted attempts at being offended by words as Carlson riffed. Carlson told Areu that it was “a basic irony here,” getting lectured by someone sitting in “MAN-hattan.” (He didn’t miss the fact that “man” was in “woman,” too.)

Carlson dismissed Purdue – “an accredited university, apparently” – where it’s easy “to bully the little, rich kids who go to your school” and pay “like $60 grand, or whatever it is, for the fake diploma you get.”

Areu shrugged about the writing guide, guessing that gender-neutral recommendations were made because the words offend “a small group of people.”

“Doesn’t that mean that a small group of super-unhappy people get to control what the rest of us say and think?” Carlson asked.

“So, who gets to decide what changes and what doesn’t?” Carlson demanded. “So, for example, I think now I’ve decided the most offensive word in the language is ‘college professor.’ For me that connotes ‘dumbness’ and ‘misuse of power’ and ‘tenure’ and ‘mediocrity.’”

In short, Carlson had a good time with it.

Social commentators have run with his twist since then, raking Purdue for banning the word “man.”

The Purdue Online Writing Lab guidelines – tucked into a discussion about levels of language formality, euphemisms, slang and idiomatic expressions – actually come quite a bit short of that.

According to Purdue’s page, the Online Writing Lab writers “merely share what our professional associations advocate,” offering guidelines from the National Council of Teachers of English on the use of “man.”

Examples: “Humanity” instead of “mankind;” “synthetic” or “manufactured” instead of “man-made;” “ordinary people” instead of the “common man;” “staff the stockroom” instead of “man the stockroom.”

The guidelines also discourages the use of “man” when referring to occupations when the person holding the job could be either a man or a woman.

Examples: “Firefighter” rather than “fireman;” “mail carrier” instead of “mailman;” and “police officer” instead of “policeman” or “policewoman.”

The handout also discourages phrases such as “male nurse” or “woman doctor” when writing about professions that traditionally had been dominated by one gender or the other.

A search of the Internet Archive: Wayback Machine show that the Online Writing Lab did soften its tone in the introduction to the guidelines.

The original, as recently as early February, had this under the heading of “Non-Sexist Language:” “Writing in a non-sexist, non-biased way is both ethically sound and effective. Non-sexist writing is necessary for most audiences; if you write in a sexist manner and alienate much of your audience from your discussion, your writing will be much less effective.”

The current guidelines changed the heading to “Gender-biased Language,” which includes: “Writing without gender bias is sound and effective. You should always consult your professional or disciplinary community standards or imagine what is appropriate to your rhetorical audience or genre. … We invite you to explore or ask your own professional or disciplinary organizations for guidance.” The section also makes references to other academic style guides with similar recommendations.

Why were those changes made? Purdue wasn't saying this week.

Still, the recommendations aren’t new. And they aren’t far from those in the Chicago Manual of Style or the AP Style Book.

But apparently they’re enough to give Tucker Carlson the leverage he needs to land a free jab below Purdue’s belt.

Why Purdue’s letting it happen is strange.

Reach J&C columnist Dave Bangert at 765-420-5258 or at dbangert@gannett.com. Follow on Twitter: @davebangert.