AS the chairperson of Senator McGovern's task force on the environment," begins Robert N. Rickles' letter to constituents. Chairperson? The title is no partisan issue: the G.O.P. also had a chairperson in Miami Beach. Thus another label comes unglued. The man and his woman are Out; the neuter "person" is In—and only the chair is allowed to linger undisturbed. Chairperson is just the latest exchange in that great linguistic bazaar where new terms are traded for old. The elderly "Mrs." and the shy "Miss" now curtsy to the crisp, swinging "Ms." "Congressone" has been suggested in federal corridors to replace the Congressman-woman stigma.
Lexicographers Ms. Casey Miller and Ms. Kate Swift recently amplified the Women's Lib party line: men have traditionally used language to subjugate women. As they see it, William James' bitch-goddess Success and the National Weather Service's Hurricane Agnes are products of the same criminal mind, designed to foster the illusion of woman as Eve, forever volatile and treacherous. The authors therefore suggest the elimination of sexist terms. "Genkind," they think, would provide a great encompassing umbrella under which all humanity could huddle, regardless. Varda One, a radical philologist, asks for the obliteration of such repugnant pronouns as he and she, his and hers. In place she offers ve, vis and ver. "We don't go around addressing persons by their race, height or eye color," says One. "Why should we identify them by sex?" Unfortunately, such designations tend to remove rather than increase an individual's sense of self. "Personalized" Christmas cards are about as personal as a paper cup.
Through the echoes of the new verbalism, one can sense the distress of that crystal spirit, George Orwell. In Nineteen Eighty-Four he posited the principles of a new tongue. "In Newspeak," wrote Orwell, "words which had once borne a heretical meaning were sometimes retained for the sake of convenience, but only with the undesirable meanings purged out of them." "Goodsex" meant chastity; "crimethink" suggested equality. "The greatest difficulty facing the compilers of Newspeak," continued Orwell, "was not to invent new words, but, having invented them, to make sure what they meant: to make sure what ranges of words they canceled by their existence."