Discourse and Diversity Response

In support of Bridwell-Bowells, I would like to further challenge the Murray quote that "academic writing should appeal to reason, maintain a distanced and detached tone, cite outside authority, and be written in response to previous academic writing: scholarly knowledge is built in increments of small additional bits added to previous knowledge." First I ask, to whose sense of reason should a text appeal? And from whom should the tone be detached? What outside authorities are worthy of citation? Are not all of the answers to these questions going to be completely subjective? I think that the very quote deconstructs itself through its own philisophical flaws.

To challenge Bridwell-Bowells. First I want to challenge her notion of creating a feminine language. She seems to be supporting the creation of such a language, of a language that de-patriarchalizes our language, but my question is how? How is it even possible to create a new language when all women in human societies are subject to patriarchal societies. I suppose that some matriarchal societies of which I am not aware may exist, and those women may be capable of such a feat as language creation. However, I cannot understand how it is possible for any other woman to do so. She is completely subject to her since-birth linguistic relationship to reality. It is inescapable. Any language that she creates is still subject to her reality that is based on a patriarchal social model. For this reason of inescapability from the patriarchal society, I argue that this hypothetical feminine language for which Bridwell-Bowells argues is not possible. But I would also like to challenge even the idea that there is not currently a extant feminine language. ANy woman who writes is reproducing her thoughts in a textual form and therefore her thoughts and personal language. Whatever she writes (so long as it is not intentionally mimeographic) will be in a feminine language. Consider adjusting this masculine/feminine dichotomy to a discussion about the racial dichotomy of black and white. Can she claim that Langston Hughes's poetry is not a representation of black language? Hughes uses the same language, which is argued to be masculine, and this language is also a "white" language. If Hughes can surpass the whiteness of the language so, too, can women surpass the masculinity of the language.