This week the U.S. Supreme Court takes up a case whose outcome may determine whether workers cooperate with internal investigations of sexual harassment in the workplace or keep quiet, The Christian Science Monitor reports.
The case involves Vicky Crawford, a longtime employee of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, Tenn., who agreed to be interviewed by her employer during an informal probe into allegations that the director of employee relations had sexually harassed female employees. (One of the director’s duties was to investigate sexual-harassment complaints.)
The Monitor reports that …
Ms. Crawford did not initiate the investigation, nor had she filed any formal charges. The internal inquiry was conducted by a female lawyer in the legal department. Crawford told the lawyer she was afraid that if she told the truth she might lose her job. Nonetheless, she became one of three women who told the lawyer that the director of employee relations had made repeated inappropriate gestures and comments of a sexual nature in the workplace.
After the investigation, the director of employee relations was given a verbal reprimand, but no other disciplinary action was taken. Senior management then began an investigation of Crawford and her department. She and the other two women were fired.
Crawford sued, of course, claiming that her employer had retaliated against her for speaking up, thereby violating Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bans employee discrimination on the basis of race or sex and also protects those who oppose it. The case, however, was tossed out by a federal judge, a decision that was later upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on the grounds that she “hadn’t filed a formal discrimination or sexual harassment charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) or taken other direct action in opposition to the alleged harassment,” and therefore was ineligible for protection under Title VII, the Monitor reports.
Given what’s at stake here — workers’ willingness to expose discrimination and harassment and participate in internal investigations, not to mention employers’ ability to address such grievances — academics and nonacademics alike should keep an eye on this case.
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10 Responses to One to Watch
plamya1952 - October 14, 2011 at 10:25 am
I had to think hard to understand “gloven,” probably because “sloven” was the first association, but “webinar” is a very GOOD way of incorporating a new technological reality, much like “telecast.” After all, I imagine that for most people under thirty, the word “web” is more readily associated with WWW than w ihspiders.
Lewis Carroll would have admitted these as “portmanteau” words. Up with neologisms!
dank48 - October 14, 2011 at 10:35 am
Remember “interabang”? Or “interrobang”; they couldn’t even decide how to spell it. It’s a logical solution to a logical problem. The bigger problem, of course, is that people didn’t like it or want it or use it.
To find a rhyme for “adjective”
You have to be imag’ative.
haroldfs - October 14, 2011 at 10:41 am
Here’s a blend that uses parts of three different words: turducken. This is a name for a meat
dish consisting of a turkey with a duck as its stuffing, and inside the duck is a chicken. I’ve
never seen one, but foodies know about it.
Chris Marrou - October 14, 2011 at 2:22 pm
Plus, someone’s already done something nearly identical that they call the Ove-Glove, pronounced “Uv-Gluv.” I’m glad the Dragons didn’t swallow the gloven – it would have proven dyspeptic.
willardmdix - October 14, 2011 at 3:36 pm
The problem with “gloven” as I see it is that the two words being joined aren’t really equivalent enough to “mate.” If there really were a “gloven” it would be a glove that IS an oven, not a glove that works with an oven. Additionally, there’s no real imperative for a neologism in this case, since “oven glove” is fine as a stand-in for “oven mitt(en).” In this respect I think “webinar” works because both “the web” and a “seminar” are ways of communicating information and there’s a kind of imperative to find something that is “a seminar on the web,” a brand new thing in itself.
mbelvadi - October 15, 2011 at 8:13 am
One problem with the DDC rule is that it doesn’t distinguish word order – I suppose leaving that to which blending of sounds seems most natural to pronounce. But order matters, and that comes out with the webinar example. The first word in the blend can be acting as a kind of adjective (or context-provider) for the second word, but not the other way around. So “gloven” is backwards – it’s not a glove-like oven. But ove-glove works because it’s an oven-context glove.
Guest - October 15, 2011 at 7:37 pm
Usage mavens will often have an intuitive negative response to an expression and then search around for a rationalization to justify their response.
I’m tempted to draw up a list of blends to fill out the DDC compliant/noncompliant chart some more.
On seeing the word ‘advective,’ my first association was ‘invective.’ I tried to make ‘advective’ into some etymologically intelligible variant … and came up dry.
Guest - October 15, 2011 at 7:41 pm
I would accept “gloven” as a synonym for “oven mitt.” The idea of an oven mitt with fingers just seems wrong to me. I mean that ontologically.
rrhersh - October 18, 2011 at 3:11 pm
“I’m tempted to draw up a list of blends to fill out the DDC compliant/noncompliant chart some more.”
A “blog” is not sort of like a web and sort of like a log.
tom_sawallis - October 28, 2011 at 5:22 pm
The DDC is DDfective. Yes, most blends are probably nominal+nominal, to describe something with characteristics of both. There are some, though, that are advectival+nominal, to describe something that is the latter, but characteristically associated with the former, the former being a former noun gone advecty. Otherwise your motel room might have a double bed, a bath, a crankshaft, and a carb(eurator). Webinar clearly belongs in this class. Similarly, the Gloven doesn’t work because its an oveny glove, not a glovey oven. If everybody’s gloves needed cooking, a Gloven (™!) might have been on the show and both product and name would have left the Dragons DDlighted.
In fact, I wonder if blends can be found for all patterns where compounding is attested. Anybody know if the question has already been investigated?