{"id":1364,"date":"2012-01-14T08:16:08","date_gmt":"2012-01-14T08:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/?p=1364"},"modified":"2012-01-12T19:19:37","modified_gmt":"2012-01-12T19:19:37","slug":"ooh-mademoiselle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/14\/ooh-mademoiselle\/","title":{"rendered":"Ooh, mademoiselle!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/French-woman.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/French-woman-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"French woman\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-1365\" \/><\/a>Wait \u2013 that should be madame.<\/p>\n<p>A town in France has banned the word \u201cmademoiselle\u201d (the French word for \u201cmiss\u201d), instead saying that all women should be addressed as \u201cmadame\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>In Cesson-Sevigne, official documents no longer say \u201cmademoiselle\u201d as it is argued that women should not be defined by their marital status. But when women face bigger issues, why does this matter?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Professor of applied linguistics Dr Penelope Gardner-Chloros, of Birkbeck University, says that a society&#8217;s language &#8211; and how it chooses its terms of address &#8211; can reflect deeply ingrained attitudes.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;[Language] it is a sensitive indicator of the distinctions that a society makes &#8211; so if it is important to know if a woman is married or not, then it will be indicated in language,&#8221; she explains.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&#8216;Mademoiselle&#8217; was a courteous title and there was even a male equivalent &#8211; &#8216;Mondamoiseau&#8217;, though it was very rarely used,&#8221; and later fell out of use completely. (The word &#8220;damoiseau&#8221; can be translated as &#8220;squire&#8221;.) (Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/magazine-16503341 \">BBC News<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wait \u2013 that should be madame. A town in France has banned the word \u201cmademoiselle\u201d (the French word for \u201cmiss\u201d), instead saying that all women should be addressed as \u201cmadame\u201d. In Cesson-Sevigne, official documents no longer say \u201cmademoiselle\u201d as it is argued that women should not be defined by their marital status. But when women [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,4,44],"tags":[1075,51,1092,44],"class_list":["post-1364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-french","category-words","tag-french-words","tag-language","tag-language-use","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1364"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1367,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364\/revisions\/1367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}