Among Englishwomen, it is understood that to be a “good gossip” requires more than a lively tone and attention to detail: You also need a good audience, by which they mean appreciative listeners who give plenty of appropriate feedback. The feedback rule of female gossip requires that listeners be at least as animated and enthusiastic as speakers. The reasoning seems to be that this is only polite; the speaker has gone to the trouble of making the information sound surprising and scandalous, so the least one can do is to reciprocate by sounding suitably shocked. Englishmen, according to my female informant, just don’t seem to have grasped this rule. They do not understand that “You are supposed to say ‘NO! Really?’ and ‘Oh my GOD!’”
在英国女性中，要想成为一名“优秀的闲话者”，需要的不仅仅是活泼的语气和对细节的关注:你还需要一个优秀的听众，他们指的是有欣赏力的听众，他们会给你很多适当的反馈。女性八卦的反馈规则要求听众至少和演讲者一样活跃和热情。理由似乎是，这只是出于礼貌;说话者费尽心思让信息听起来让人惊讶和反感，所以最起码要做的就是用适当的震惊来回应。据我的女线人说，英国人似乎就是不懂得这条规则。他们不明白“你应该说‘不!真的吗?’和‘天啊!’”
My female informants agreed, however, that a man who did respond in the approved female manner would sound inappropriately girly, or even disturbingly effeminate. Even the gay males I interviewed felt that the “NO! Really?” kind of response would be regarded as decidedly “camp”. The unwritten rules of English gossip etiquette do allow men to express shock or surprise when they hear a particularly juicy bit of gossip, but it is understood that a suitable expletive conveys such surprise in a more acceptably masculine fashion.
然而，我的女性线人一致认为，如果一个男人以被认可的女性方式回应，听起来就会显得不太淑女，甚至令人不安地柔弱。甚至我采访的男同性恋也觉得“不!真的吗?这种回应肯定会被视为“阵营”。英国八卦礼仪的不成文规则确实允许男人在听到一个特别有趣的八卦时表达震惊或惊讶，但可以理解的是，一个合适的咒骂词可以用一种更男性化的方式来表达这种惊讶。
Unit 5 Active reading (2) / P99 Marked: women in the workplace
The term “market” is a staple of linguistic theory. It refers to the way language alters the base meaning of a word by adding something – a little linguistic addition that has no meaning on its own. The unmarked form of a word carries the meaning that goes without saying, what you think of when you’re not thinking anything special.
“市场”一词是语言学理论中的一个重要术语。它指的是语言通过添加一些东西来改变一个词的基本意思的方式——一些本身没有意义的语言附加。一个词的无标记形式承载着不言而喻的含义，当你没有想到任何特别的事情时，你会想到什么。
The unmarked tense of verbs in English is the present – for example, visit. To indicate past, you have to mark the verbs for “past” by adding ed to yield visited. For future, you add a word: will visit. Nouns are presumed to be singular until marked for plural. To convey the idea of more than one, we typically add something, usually s or es. More than one visit becomes visits, and one dish becomes two dishes, thanks to the plural marking.
英语中动词的无标记时态是现在时，例如，visit。为了表示过去，你必须在表示“过去”的动词上加上ed来表示已访问的次数。对于未来，你加一个字:会来拜访。名词在被标记为复数之前被认为是单数。为了表达不止一个的意思，我们通常会添加一些东西，通常是s或es。由于使用了复数标记，不止一次的访问变成了访问，一道菜变成了两道菜。
The unmarked forms of most English words also convey “male”. Being male is the unmarked case. We have ending, such as -ess and -ette, to mark words as female. Unfortunately, marking words for female also, by association, tends to mark them for frivolousness. Would you feel safe entrusting your life to a doctorette? This is why many poets and actors who happen to be female object to the marked forms poetess and actress. Alfre Woodard, an Oscar nominee for Best Supporting Actress, says she identifies herself as an actor because “actresses worry about
eyelashes and cellulite, and women who are actors worry about the characters we are playing”. Any marked form can pick up extra meaning beyond what the marking is intended to denote. The extra meanings carried by gender markers reflect the traditional associations with the female gender: not quite serious, often sexual.
大多数英语单词的无标记形式也表示“男性”。男性是不明显的。我们用-ess和-ette这样的结尾来标记女性。不幸的是，通过联想，标记女性的词语，往往会标记为轻浮。把你的生命托付给医生，你会感到安全吗?这就是为什么许多碰巧是女性的诗人和演员反对女诗人和女演员的明显形式。获得奥斯卡最佳女配角提名的阿尔夫?伍达德(Alfre Woodard)说，她认为自己是一名演员，因为“女演员担心睫毛和脂肪，女演员担心我们演的角色”。任何被标记的形式都可以获得超出标记本意之外的额外含义。性别标记所承载的额外含义反映了传统意义上对女性性别的联想:不太严肃，通常是性的。
I was able to identify the styles and types of the women at the conference because each of us had to make decisions about hair, clothing, make-up and accessories, and each of those decisions carried meaning. Every style available to us was marked. Of course, the men in our group had to make decisions too, but their choices carried far less meaning. The men could have chosen styles that were marked, but they didn’t have to, and in this group, none did. Unlike the women, they had the option of being unmarked.
我能够识别出参加会议的女性的风格和类型，因为我们每个人都必须做出关于发型、服装、化妆和配饰的决定，而这些决定都有意义。我们能得到的每一款都做了标记。当然，我们组的男性也要做决定，但他们的选择意义不大。男性本可以选择有标记的款式，但他们没有必要这样做，在这一组中，没有人这样做。与女性不同的是，她们可以选择不被标记。
I took account of the men’s clothes. There could have been a cowboy shirt with string tie or a three-piece suit or a necklaced hippie in jeans. But there wasn’t. All eight men wore brown or blue slacks and standard-style shirts of light colors.
我考虑了男人们的衣服。可以是一件系着细领带的牛仔衬衫，或者是一件三件套西装，或者
是一件系着领带的牛仔裤。但是没有。这八个人都穿着棕色或蓝色的休闲裤和浅色的标准风格衬衫。
No man wore sandals or boots; their shoes were dark, closed, comfortable, and flat. In short, unmarked.
没有人穿凉鞋或靴子;他们的鞋是深色的，合脚的，舒适而平整。简而言之,无名。
Although no man wore make-up, you couldn’t say the men didn’t wear make-up in the sense that you could say a woman didn’t wear make-up. For men, no make-up is unmarked.
虽然没有男人化妆，但你不能说男人不化妆，就像你不能说女人不化妆一样。对于男人来说，没有妆容是没有标记的。
I asked myself what style we women could have adopted that would have been unmarked, like the men’s. The answer was: none. There is no unmarked woman.
我问我自己，我们女人应该采取什么样的风格，才不会像男人那样被人注意到。答案是:没有。没有不知名的女人。
There is no woman’s hairstyle that could be called “standard”, that says mothing about her. The range of women’s hairstyles is staggering, but if a woman’s hair has no particular style, this is itself is taken as a statement that she doesn’t care how she looks – an eloquent message that can disqualify a woman for many positions.
没有一种女性的发型可以被称为“标准发型”，它代表了对她的评价。女性发型的种类多得惊人，但如果一个女人的头发没有特别的发型，这本身就被认为是她不在乎自己长相的表现——这是一个雄辩的信息，可以让一个女人失去很多职位的资格。
Women have to choose between shoes that are comfortable and shoes that are deemed attractive.