For
a long time, I've found the use of ‘girl’ and ‘boy’ to refer to adults as pretty
irritating and belittling – not when used in a group of friends, say, in
relaxed and informal circumstances like in a pub, but by official commentators,
teachers, journalists and so on. Here in the UK, I’m always annoyed when I see
official signs in, for example Female Toilets at an adult college, addressing
the students of the college, and presumably all female staff of all ages, as
‘GIRLS’. I’ve always noticed how it
seems much more unusual to describe adult males as ‘boys’ than it is to talk
about women as ‘girls’.
So today on
BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07m4d53
I was interested to hear how an interviewee, Sarah Grieves, Language Research
Project Manager at Cambridge University Press, was reflecting, amongst other
things, on the use of ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ to refer to male and female
sportspeople. She draws on 20 years of studying the English language to
highlight the disparities in how we talk about men and women in relation to
sport. Today the Rio de Janeiro Olympics opens, and (English) language researchers
are going to be listening carefully to how commentators describe the
competitors.
There is
apparently more likelihood that female sportspeople are referred to as ‘girls’
rather than as ‘women’, compared to 'boys' being used to refer to 'men', and what’s more, women sportspeople are
disproportionately described in terms of their clothing, their marital status,
and so on; and if they have children, as ‘mothers’, compared to their male counterparts
with offspring who are more rarely referred to as ‘fathers’ by sports
commentators. Also words like ‘strong’
tend to be used more for males than for women – so men’s physical prowess on
the sports field rather than their social status and clothing is focussed on.
Yet
sometimes sports commentators also refer to men as ‘boys’. The word ‘boy', when
used to describe adult male humans, is either friendly or 'matey' and suitable therefore for informal contexts. If used in more formal contexts, it rarely indicates much respect, but instead
suggests a kind of infantilisation—in other words, a kind of belittling, an
implicit suggestion that the person is not quite adult, not really fully mature,
not quite fully responsible. At best it is informal and friendly, but is this appropriate when describing professionals in their professional context? If you look up ‘boy’ in a dictionary you see
something like this, from Google:
1. a male child or youth.
"a four-year-old boy"
"as a boy he had been fascinated by
architecture"
Google gives the following first, main, definition for ‘girl':
1. a female child.
"girls go through puberty earlier
than boys"
(Then there are various other definitions - see below where I've listed many of them.)
But when it comes to the various definitions and usages of the word ‘girl’ I was especially struck by this one at Collins Dictionary: “Usage note. The use of girl as in meaning 4, to refer to a woman of any age, is highly likely to be considered
old-fashioned or to cause offence.”
(my bold underlining)
4. informal
a woman of any age
And here is the meaning 4 at
dictionary.com:
4. Informal: Sometimes Offensive. a grown woman, especially when referred to familiarly:
She's having the girls over for
bridge next week.”
…with their Usage Note:
Usage note
Some adult women are offended if
referred to as a girl, or informally, a gal. However, a group of
adult female friends often refer to themselves as the girls, and their
“girls night out” implies the company of adult females. Also, a woman may
express camaraderie by addressing another woman as girl, as in You
go, girl! or Attagirl!
The Cambridge Dictionary online, as part
of its definition, gives this information:
[old-fashioned]
a woman worker,
especially
when seen
as one of a group:
shop/office
girls
So it’s
pretty clear that the use of ‘girls’ to describe adult women, in formal,
professional contexts, such as that of competing in the Olympics, is either not
fully respectful of women’s formal profession, status, age and maturity, or it
is at best old-fashioned, or even at worst downright offensive. Also, the commentators are not the ‘friends’
of the women they are describing, so shouldn’t be taking these liberties to
describe the women as ‘girls’.
I’d like to
hear ‘girl’ used much less to talk about responsible adult women – who should
not be infantilised by being called merely ‘girls’, as Sarah Grieves the language professional at Cambridge
University Press pointed out today on the BBC.
I’d also be
interested to hear what you think too, about the use of ‘girls’ and ‘boys’ to
describe adult women and men in the mainstream and other media.
Further definitions of BOY and GIRL:
BOY: Secondary definitions, again by Google:
2. a person's son.
"she put her little boy to bed"
3. a male child or young man who does a specified job.
"a delivery boy"
4. a man, especially a young or relatively young one.
"I was the new boy at the office"
5. informal
men who mix socially or who belong to a particular group, team, or profession.
"he wants to stay one of the boys"
6. dated
a friendly form of address from one man to another, especially from an older man to a young man.
"my dear boy, don't say another word!"
7. dated offensive
(often used as a form of address) a black male servant or worker.
8. a form of address to a male dog.
"down boy!"
GIRL: Secondary definitions, again by Google:
2. a person's daughter. “he was devoted to his little girl”, with the synonym ‘female child’.
3. a young or relatively young woman.
"I haven't got the time to meet girls"
4. a young woman of a specified kind or having a specified job.
"a career girl"
5. informal
women who mix socially.
"I look forward to having a night with the girls"
6. a person's girlfriend.
"his girl eloped with an accountant"
7. dated
a female servant.