Language and Gender (Christine Porcaro, Week 9, Reflective/Comment)

I just wanted to comment of Christopher Martini's post from the blog group http://ir105f07.blogspot.com. He wrote about gender linguistics and how language influences the way people think. I find this very interesting because there was a study done where they went to elementary schools and told the kids about different careers that they could persue. At some schools they would talk about becoming an architect and they would use the pronoun "he" when describing the position. Then they would take a survey at the end of the talk and see who thought that they could become an architect. When surveyed the majority of the girls in the class could not see themselves becoming an architect. When they talked about becoming an architect with a gender neutral pronoun more girls said that they could see themselves becoming an architect. I am not sure if they ever just used a female pronoun, but if they did I am sure that there would be a marked difference in how the boys responded to the idea of becoming an architect. I guess I just find it interesting how much language affects how we think, which in turn affects our actions...which I guess in turn affects the international system.