Talk:transman

Proscribed

Shouldn't "proscribed" be reserved for words regarded as wrong for lexicographical rather than sociopolitical reasons? Equinox ◑ 18:45, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

In this case, the proscription is lexicographical: adjectives like "old", "happy" or "trans" are (according to authorities on English language use) separated from nouns they modify, like "man"; hence "old man" not *"oldman" (which is a blue link marked as proscribed), "happy man" not *"happyman", etc.

In the general case, I'm not sure lexicographical proscription is clearly distinguishable from "sociopolitical" proscription. For example, American proscription of "learnt" may be nominally lexicographical — "the true past tense suffix in English is -ed" — but American acceptance of "kept", "crept", etc, and British prescription of "learnt", suggests that American proscription is motivated by more than just an idea that "-t" isn't a past tense suffix. (Specifically, it may be implicitly partially motivated by the association of "learnt" primarily with AAVE and secondarily with poor white Southerners, because people have been shown to "respond negatively to the same speaker when they use features of Hispanic or Black English", per Meyerhoff citing Purnell 1999 and Henderson 2001.)

- -sche (discuss) 20:42, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Much later: I would be happy to see the "proscribed" label removed until compelling evidence is supplied. A proper exercise would be a study in which emotional responses of subjects are observed in a properly conducted experiment; made up proscriptions by various pundits and pseudo-experts can hardly be taken as reliable descriptions of reality. I created Wiktionary:Requests for verification/English#transwoman for the label "sometimes proscribed" for transwoman; let us see where it gets us. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:26, 19 July 2020 (UTC)