From archive (archive)
From: ecl@mtgzy.UUCP (Evelyn C. Leeper)
Organization: AT&T Information Systems, Middletown NJ
Subject: NATIVE TONGUE by Suzette Haden Elgin 
		(was Re: linguistics in _Stranger_Strange_Land_)
Date: 4 Mar 88 01:24:45 GMT




		     NATIVE TONGUE by Suzette Haden Elgin
		       DAW, 1984, 0-87997-945-3, $3.50.
		      A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper

[In article <2620@csli.STANFORD.EDU> goldberg@csli.UUCP (Jeffrey Goldberg)
writes: "NATIVE TONGUE by Suzette H. Elgin has more linguistics in it than
any other sf book I have ever read ... I thought that it was an outstanding
book despite [some linguistic flaws]."  I coincidentally just finished
reading NATIVE TONGUE.  My linguistics is a bit rusty--my college linguistics
course being (my God!) twenty years ago--but I found this book so
reprehensible for reasons unrelated to linguistics that I feel obliged to
explain why I most certainly do *not* recommend it.]

     NATIVE TONGUE is based on the same premise as Margaret Atwood's HANDMAID'S
TALE (though it predates it by a couple of years): that women have been
relegated to second-class status, kept as chattel by their fathers or husbands.
This is brought about by the 24th Amendment, which repealed the 19th, and the
25th Amendment, which deemed women legally minors.  I suppose this makes this
an alternate history since the actual 24th Amendment (ratified in 1967)
outlawed poll taxes and the actual 25th Amendment (ratified in 1971) described
the procedure for filling vacancies in the Vice-Presidency, etc.  However,
since the rest of novel seems to presuppose our current reality, I can only
conclude that Elgin did her research from a copy of the Constitution printed
before 1967.  Such sloppy research does not encourage one regarding the rest of
the book.

     There is another premise, however: that we have been contacted by aliens
and certain families ("Lines") are especially adept at learning languages, both
human and alien.  That women are as good at this as men is one factor that
keeps them from total subjugation--there is too great a shortage of translators
to waste anyone.  The plot of NATIVE TONGUE revolves around this situation and
the attempt of women to create their own language.

     I disliked this novel for three reasons: two minor and one major.  The
first minor reason is the sloppy research already mentioned, but this could
have been corrected by a good editor, apparently not present at DAW when this
manuscript arrived.  The other minor reason is that the children in the novel
all learn three to five un-related Earth languages and one alien one from
infancy.  If the purpose of learning languages is to communicate with aliens
and English is a universal Earth language (as it seems to be), why have the
children learning Hopi and Swedish when they could be learning alien
languages--especially when alien translators are in such short supply that a
given alien language probably has only three human speakers, including one
toddler and one woman?  It's not from some abstract desire to keep these
languages alive, because the men of the Lines are obviously too cold-blooded
for that.

     The major reason I disliked this book is that I found it so stridently
"women's lib" as to be positively reprehensible.  Most books which postulate a
male-dominated society of the future show some moderating influences.  Atwood's
book, for example, localized the situation to the United States and even there
there were men who didn't entirely support it.  There was also a justification
for the change in society (a decrease in fertility) and the idea that women in
such organizations as Women Against Pornography did as much to bring it about
as men.  Elgin's androcracy is world-wide (hard to explain on the basis of two
amendments to the United States Constitution), brought about against the wishes
of all women (so far as we can tell), and every man--WITHOUT EXCEPTION--fully
supports it.  I know some men on this planet and the only conclusion that I can
draw is that Elgin is writing about an alien planet with an alien species on
it.  The extremism of her premise and her characters makes it and them
impossible to believe and the idea that a language invented just for women
would help the situation is just one more impossibility piled on top.  This is
the sort of literature often deemed "hate-literature" and I cannot recommend
it.

					Evelyn C. Leeper
					(201) 957-2070
				UUCP:	ihnp4!mtgzy!ecl
				ARPA:	mtgzy!ecl@rutgers.rutgers.edu
					Copyright 1988 Evelyn C. Leeper