Ms. Matters
Death of a feminist language innovator highlights the radical changes to the way we greet each other
“Honorifics are just part of this broad-scale, sweeping set of changes in language.” SALI TAGLIAMONTE LINGUIST
Ms. Sheila Michaels died last month at the age of 78.
Is the two-letter honorific she helped to popularize in the 1970s — a decade of feminist ferment — soon to follow?
Quite possibly — as are Miss and Mrs., the “sexist” honorifics that Ms. was meant to replace. Oh, and Mr., you’re likely on your way out, too. Use of the common honorifics has declined over recent decades as issues of gender equality and identity have risen, says Sali Tagliamonte, a University of Toronto linguist.
And the abbreviations are likely to further fade from the page and spoken conversations.
“Language is like that, if people start insisting on there not being these gendered words,” says Tagliamonte, Canada Re- search Chair in language variation and change at the school.
“The developments across the 20th century have been moving more and more strongly toward these kinds of changes . . . and the honorifics are just part of this broad-scale, sweeping set of changes in language.”
As an expert on the influence of cultural shifts on the lexicon, she expects that ongoing societal changes — such as the women’s movement and LGBTQ rights — are suppressing their usage.
“When you have socio-cultural change and you have economic change, you’re going to have language change,” Tagliamonte says.
She points, as examples, to precipitous declines in the use of sex-specific words such as “stewardess” and “chairman” from common conversation and the rise of Ms. as a ubiquitous honorific for women — married or not.
Michaels did not coin the abbreviation of “Mizz,” which had been used as far back as1901, the New York Times reported in her obituary.
What the committed feminist did, however, was help repurpose Ms. as a generic descriptor for all woman — like Mr. for men — who had been segregated into Miss and Mrs. depending on marital status.
Author and language expert Patricia T. O’Conner predicts that gendered honorifics will all but disappear from the written language.
“My personal feeling is that eventually the category of honorifics that identify people merely by sex or domestic circumstances . . . will fall away in ordinary writing and only last names will be used,” O’Conner, who has co-authored five books on language and is a former editor at the New York Times Book Review, said in an email.
“They may live on for quite some time in direct address, however.”
Tagliamonte says more recent cultural developments in transgender rights could also reduce honorific usage. “Nowadays some people say ‘I don’t want to be identified as a he or a she — I don’t want the language to typecast me.’ ”
Refusal by a U of T professor to use the word “they” — rather than he or she — to describe transgender students recently caused a significant controversy at the school. “The whole transgender community and the LGBTQ community were up in arms,” Tagliamonte says. “This is what happens with gender in language.”
This week, London’s transit agency announced that conductors in the city’s vast subway system would no longer use “Ladies and gentlemen” to preface announcements. The Washington Post reported that the greeting will be replaced with a gender-neutral “Hello everyone” — a move meant to placate LGBTQ protesters who complained the former salutation was polite, but dated.
Tagliamonte points out that some formerly ubiquitous honorifics — such as madam — have already fallen into disuse.
“It once was simply used for a female. But of course you call someone a madam these days and it has very negative connotations.”
Another force that might drive a decline in honorifics is the informal correspondence styles that have evolved in the age of email, says Ottawa etiquette expert Julie Blais Comeau.
In corresponding by email with a stranger you can and should dispense with Mrs. and Miss completely, says Blais Comeau, who has been writing about and advising businesses and others on proper etiquette — in both French and English — for a decade.
But in an opening electronic missive, Mr. and Ms. — or Dr., Professor or Your Majesty, as the case may be — should almost always be used, she advises.
“When is doubt, you should always go formal,” says Blais Comeau.
Yet emailed honorifics subsequently — and most frequently — become transactional.
“Let’s say I reply to your email and I (sign off ) ‘Julie,’ ” she says as an example. “Then that, going forward, is giving you permission to call me Julie.”
In face-to-face settings such as business meetings, Blais Comeau says it’s up to the host to find out beforehand how guests would prefer to be addressed during introductions.
But Canadians in general are quicker to move to a first-name basis than they were when she started her etiquette career, she says.
Though language tends to follow cultural, economic and technical developments, it can provide the flashpoint for opposition against those trends. And heated charges of “political correctness” may throw temporary lifelines to falling terms like the common honorifics.
As well, Tagliamonte says the cultural importance of honorifics among some groups — Japanese and some South Asian cultures, for instance — could keep those terms alive longer in multicultural Canada.
And abbreviations can still continue to play a role in establishing respect in hierarchical settings, such as a classroom.
Indeed, where Tagliamonte would have stridently rejected the use of Miss as a younger woman, her daughter — who is in teachers’ college — welcomes it from her students.
“She loves being called Miss,” Tagliamonte says.
“It’s not because she wants to identify with some particular marital status, it’s because it’s a way of distinguishing hierarchical relationship.”