新聞台095：關於‘Ms.一詞的由來’

我如讀到精確的報導語詞，對記者和編輯都會心生敬意。因為，新聞媒體的文化功能常被新聞人自己所忽略，多數記者和編輯習慣以‘常識’應付報導所需的語言和文字，而非‘知識’。

由於我已經開始好奇，如果蔡英文當選總統，行政體制有哪些部分必須因為女性元首而更易，近日查閱的資料也涉及新聞報導用詞，因而有幸讀到‘紐約時報’一篇關於語言和文字的重要文章。

我轉載全文及中國某位先生的譯文之前，先聊些雜感：

1，紐時有‘語言文化’專版或專欄，台灣媒體也可以考慮。例如新詞‘小鮮肉’，它没有性的意涵嗎？真的適合作為對人的正面評價？這都值得公開討論。

2，紐時有記者願意探究語詞的來源和變遷。我知道，同業中也有一些這樣的人，媒體主管應該多予肯定和鼓勵，引為内部的作業規範，甚或容許在新聞版面呈現其内容。

3，紐時會‘宣布’開始採用特定的語詞；這雖是認可的宣告，卻是對報導品質的自詡，是新聞媒體的驕傲。我不知道台灣媒體會不會宣布採用諸如‘小鮮肉’等新詞，更不知道會不會有媒體禁止記者或編輯使用這類爭議語詞。

以下是‘Ms.一詞的由來’：

2009年10月23日，《紐約時報》語言文化版 The New York Times|On Language；作者 Ben Zimmer，譯者 seez_franco

In the Nov. 10, 1901, edition of The Sunday Republican of Springfield, Mass., tucked away in an item at the bottom of Page 4, an unnamed writer put forth a modest proposal. “There is a void in the English language which, with some diffidence, we undertake to fill,” the writer began. “Every one has been put in an embarrassing position by ignorance of the status of some woman. To call a maiden Mrs. is only a shade worse than to insult a matron with the inferior title Miss. Yet it is not always easy to know the facts.

”1901年11月10日，在麻薩諸塞州斯布林菲爾德市的《週日共和黨人報》（The Sunday Republican）第四頁頁腳的一則新聞中，一位匿名作家提出了一個溫和的建議。“英語中有一片我們需要但又怯於填補的空白，”那位作家在文章開頭這樣寫道。“由於忽視某些女性的身份地位，每個人都陷入了一種尷尬的境地。稱呼一位少女為Mrs.比起用卑微的Miss來侮辱一名主婦也好不到哪兒去。不過想要一探究竟並非總那麼容易。

”How to avoid this potential social faux pas? The writer suggested “a more comprehensive term which does homage to the sex without expressing any views as to their domestic situation,” namely, Ms. With this “simple” and “easy to write” title, a tactfully ambiguous compromise between Miss and Mrs., “the person concerned can translate it properly according to circumstances.” The writer even gave a pronunciation tip: “For oral use it might be rendered as ‘Mizz,’ which would be a close parallel to the practice long universal in many bucolic regions, where a slurred Mis’ does duty for Miss and Mrs. alike.”

如何避免這種社交禮儀失誤呢？該作者建議採用“一種更為周全的稱呼，這種稱呼一方面尊重女性，另一方面又不透露女性的婚姻狀況”。這一稱呼就是Ms.。利用這個“簡潔”且“便於書寫”的稱呼——一個介於Miss和Mrs.之間的圓滑且模棱兩可的折中詞，“便可根據場合選擇更為適當的詞來稱呼相應的對象”。該作者甚至還給出了Ms.的發音提示：“這個詞的發音應該是‘Mizz’，接近許多鄉下地方人們慣常的發音習慣，他們將Miss和Mrs.念成含混不清的‘Mis’”。

The item in the Springfield paper made a minor splash, getting picked up and discussed over the next few weeks in other newspapers around the country, from Iowa to Minnesota to Utah. As 1901 drew to a close, however, the Ms. proposal faded from the public eye — though it seems to have made enough of an impression to lurk just below the radar for decades to come. In 1932, it reappeared: a letter writer in The New York Times wondered if “a woman whose marital status is in doubt” should be addressed as M’s or Miss. And in 1949, the philologist Mario Pei noted in his book “The Story of Language” that “feminists, who object to the distinction between Mrs. and Miss and its concomitant revelatory features, have often proposed that the two present-day titles be merged into a single one, ‘Miss’ (to be written ‘Ms.’).”

斯布林菲爾德報（即《週日共和黨人報》）上的這則新聞引發一陣小小的騷動，從愛荷華到明尼蘇達再到猶他，全國各地的報紙都在接下來的幾周內針對該報道發表了評論性文章。然而，到1901年年底，關於使用Ms.一詞的建議漸漸淡出公眾視野，不過它已積累了足夠的人氣，大可韜光養晦，在幾十年後捲土重來。果然，到1932年，該提議再現江湖，紐約時報一位書信作家發問：是否應稱呼“一位婚姻狀況不明的女士”為M’s或Miss。在1949年，哲學家馬利奧·佩伊（Mario Pei）在他的書《語言的故事》（The Story of Language）中寫道“女權主義者否認Mrs.和Miss間的差異以及伴隨該差異的相關特徵，故她們經常提議將這兩個現代稱謂合二為一，統一成Miss（書寫形式為‘Ms.’）”。

The genesis of Ms. lay buried in newspaper archives until earlier this year, when after much painstaking hunting through digitized databases I found The Sunday Republican article that started it all. A few years ago I stumbled upon a mention of the article in another newspaper, The New Era, of Humeston, Iowa, on Dec. 4, 1901. Fred Shapiro, the editor of “The Yale Book of Quotations,” then found an excerpt from The Sunday Republican article in The Salt Lake Tribune. After discovering that The Sunday Republican had recently been scanned and digitized by Readex, a publisher of digital historical materials, I was finally able to zero in on this forgotten document.

直到今年早些時候，深藏在陳年舊聞檔案中關於Ms.一詞的由來才被發掘。經過仔細搜索數字資料庫，我發現是《周日共和黨人》報最早刊登了此則報道。幾年前，我偶然在1901年12月4日的愛荷華州赫姆斯頓市《新時代報》（The New Era）上看到一篇文章。後來，《耶魯名人名言語錄》（The Yale Book of Quotations）的編輯弗雷德·夏皮洛（Fred Shapiro）在《鹽湖城論壇報》（The Salt Lake Tribune）上看到一篇原載於《週日共和黨人報》上的文章的節選。因為這些發現，一家數字歷史文獻出版商雷德克斯（Readex）於近日掃描《週日共和黨人報》的所有文字檔案，將其轉化為電子資料。我也因此得以集中看到這些早已被世人所遺忘的寶貴資料。

Though Pei identified the early proponents of Ms. as feminists, the Republican writer (most likely a man) presented the argument for the title as one of simple etiquette and expediency. As the linguist Dennis Baron recounts in his 1986 book “Grammar and Gender,” these considerations remained the driving force in the 1950s, when some guides to business correspondence offered Ms. as a stopgap solution. Fraily and Schnell’s “Practical Business Writing” of 1952, for instance, recommended it as a title “that saves debating between Miss and Mrs.” Two years later, Brown and Doris’s “Business Executive’s Handbook” briefly noted that “a few business concerns now use ‘Ms.’ ” Outside of secretarial circles, however, Ms. remained largely unknown.

儘管佩伊指出，Ms.一詞最初是由女權主義者提出的，但《週日共和黨人報》那位作者（十有八九是一名男性）則辯解道，該詞不過是一個禮節性稱呼，也是（旨在替代Miss或Mrs.這類敏感詞的）權宜之計。正如語言學家丹尼斯·拜倫（Dennis Baron）在其1986年版的《語法和性》（Grammar and Gender）一書中提到的那樣，“這些觀點在上世紀50年代甚為流行，在當時一些針對商業信函的寫作指南中就把Ms.一詞作為解決女性稱呼這一棘手問題的權宜之計。例如，弗萊利（Fraily）和施奈爾（Schnell）在1952年版的《商業信函書寫實踐》（Practical Business Writing）中寫道，Ms.這一稱謂“化解了應採用Miss還是Mrs.這一問題上的爭論”。兩年後，布朗（Brown）和桃瑞絲（Doris）在《企業執行官手冊》（Business Executive’s Handbook）一書中簡要提到“一些企業如今正使用Ms.一詞（來稱呼女性）”。然而，對於大多數不從事文書工作的人來說，Ms.依舊是一個相對陌生的詞。

It was certainly unknown, in 1961, to Sheila Michaels, a 22-year-old civil rights worker in New York City, who one day spotted it on a piece of mail that her roommate received. In fact, she initially took it as a typo, albeit a felicitous one. Fiercely independent, Michaels abhorred having her identity defined by marriage. Struck by Ms., she became a one-woman lobbying force for the title as a feminist alternative to Miss and Mrs. She even unwittingly replicated The Republican’s rationale for pronouncing Ms. as “mizz,” since she had noticed this ambiguous spoken form when she was a child growing up in St. Louis.

在1961年，對於居住在紐約的22歲的民權工作者席拉·邁克爾斯（Sheila Michaels）來說，這個詞自然是個生僻詞。一天，她在室友收到的信件中偶然發現了這個單詞。事實上，她起初以為這是個錯別字，儘管它看起來還挺靠譜。席拉是個性獨立且要強的女性，對於用婚姻狀況來定義女性身份這一做法她自然心生厭惡。受到Ms.一詞的啟發，她踏上了獨自游說之旅，呼籲用更具女權主義色彩的Ms.來替代先前的Miss和Mrs.。她甚至還在無意中重申了《週日共和黨人報》中關於應把Ms.發音為‘mizz’的理由。在密蘇里聖路易斯（St. Louis）長大的她早就註意到這一常為人們所混淆的發音了。

For several years her fellow activists evinced little interest. The turning point, Michaels told me recently, came when she was interviewed on the progressive New York radio station WBAI in late 1969 or early 1970. The program “Womankind” invited her on with other members of a radical group known simply as the Feminists, and during a lull in the show she plunged into her impassioned plea for Ms. Her advocacy finally paid off. The following August, when women’s rights supporters commemorated the 50th anniversary of suffrage with the Women’s Strike for Equality, Ms. became recognized as a calling card of the feminist movement.Just days before the national demonstration, on Aug. 24, Gloria Steinem registered her approval in her “City Politic” column in New York magazine. “Personally,” she wrote, “I’m all in favor of the new form and will put it on all letters and documents.” Still, she was uncertain about the pronunciation: “An airline clerk asked me, ‘Miss or Mrs.?’ on the phone, and I was stumped. How the hell do you pronounce Ms.?” By the time Steinem and her colleagues introduced Ms. magazine in 1971, both the “miss” and “mizz” pronunciations were considered acceptable — with “mizz,” the “bucolic” form in the 1901 proposal, eventually winning out in common usage.

8月24日，也就是全國性遊行爆發的前幾天，《紐約》雜誌（New York magazine）作家格洛麗亞·斯特恩尼姆（Gloria Steinem）在其專欄“城市慧”（City Politic）中認可了Ms.一詞。她寫道，“我個人非常認同這個新稱謂，我會在書寫所有信函和文件時使用這個詞。”不過她對此詞的發音依然存疑：“一位航空公司接線員在電話那頭問我是‘Miss還是Mrs.？’（小姐還是太太）我頓時啞巴了。Ms.這個詞到底該怎樣發音？”在斯特恩尼姆及其同事於1971年推出《Ms.雜誌》（Ms. Magazine）之前，“miss”和“mizz”這兩種發音都被認可。而於1901年（《週日共和黨人報》上）提出的鄉下發音“mizz”最終勝出，並廣為使用。

In some quarters, recognition of Ms. was slow in coming. The New York Times waited until 1986 to announce that it would embrace the use of Ms. as an honorific alongside Miss and Mrs. Eighty-five years after The Sunday Republican’s unassuming contribution to our modern lexicon, The Times admitted that the “void in the English language” had been filled.

在某些地區，對Ms.一詞的認可卻姍姍來遲。《紐約時報》直到1986年才宣佈他們將把Ms.一詞視為Miss和Mrs.以外的又一敬語用於其報導中。 《週日共和黨人報》在1901年為現代詞匯寶庫增添了一筆財富。八十五年後，《時代》周刊承認，“英語中的空白”已經填補完畢。

2015.1202。圖引自維基百科：

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