[lbo-talk] language

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sun Jul 9 10:41:02 PDT 2006


Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> Sooo...what do you call a boy infant's genital package, assuming
> that's the word/phrase he will probably pick up? "Penis" sounds too
> clinical; "cock," too sexual; "wee-wee," too goofy.

Haven't the foggiest idea -- but the problem can be not what the boy picks up but what the adults around him pick up from the language they use to him/her. One night when some friends let off my older daughter at our house (at a time when our son was around one year) she called out to them as she got out of the car, "Nighty-night."

Incidentally, I vaguely remember reading someplace lately that there is a rationale (which I forget now) for using baby-talk to infants.

Carrol



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