ABSTRACT
In this opening quotation Judge Gary Strankman was commenting on the balance of power in colonial California at a time when the indigenous Indian population became subordinated to the expanding White settlers. There is little question who were the winners, who were the namers, and who were the named. Although not addressing gender specifically, his remarks draw our attention again to the connections between race, gender, and power, and how paternalism has defined women in its own terms as others and outsiders. The names we give to things are not arbitrary. In this chapter I explore the significance of naming. I also show how the intellectual foundations of linguistics based on the principle of arbitrariness of the linguistic sign and theories of markedness have discriminated against women.
