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I, too, am very tired of this thread, but I am troubled by one thing:
Of all the posts that suggest/assert/demand that technical writing
avoid the use of Master/Slave, none has proposed an alternative
that accurately and succinctly expresses the same kind of
relationship that .master/slave does.
Stuart Burnfield wrote (in part):
>Are the words 'master' and 'slave' to be avoided because they are
>offensive? Maybe, maybe not. We all have our own opinions and I'm
>sure no-one has changed theirs as a result of this thread.
snip
>'Master' by itself is quite a useful word. My (modest) dictionary has
>21 definitions for the word, 20 of them not relating to slavery.
>Several meanings relate to dominance, control, primacy, authority,
>superiority, and so on. These all have their uses -- master disk,
>master list, master host, master file.
I agree wholeheartedly that "master" is an extremely useful word with
few, if any, negative connotations by itself. How many of us do not
aspire to mastery over our chosen craft? How many of you who took
the time and invested the effort to earn a Masters degree in technical
communication would be willing to call it a secondary degree (which
is what it would logically be since the customary Latin formula used
in academic graduation ceremonies typically refers to a Bachelor
degree as "gradum primus") because "master" is potentially
offensive to some in the context of "master/slave"? And how about
the Master's golf tournament? And how would the genie address
Aladdin? (And thanks to Nina Panzica of Facilitatorpiece Media
for the good laugh yesterday...)
But Stuart also said:
>I do suggest that we avoid master/slave terminology in our technical
>writing, not because they're offensive but because as a pair they're
>such bad metaphors for the things they are meant to represent. There's
>nothing about hard drives, or help files, that reminds me of the
>relationship between master and slave, so why use the image?
Here I disagree--sort of. On first reading, Stuart's comments seem to
dismiss master/slave in general, and I have to disagree with that. Two
examples of valid usage of the terminology have already been cited
in other posts: the master cylinder and slave cylinder in a hydraulic
brake system, and the master/slave relationship between
synchronized tape transports in a recording studio or video editing
system. In both cases, the essential relationship is that the slave
device does nothing at all unless and until it is told to do something
by the master. On the other hand, Stuart mentions two specific
cases where I agree that master/slave does _not_ accurately
convey the actual relationship. A master disk drive, for example,
does not directly control the actions of the slave drives; all drives
are
actually controlled by an external entity.
But Stuart's post, like most others, does not propose a good
alternative.
Some have suggested primary/secondary, but to me that pair implies
that their may be some temporal relationship as well as or in addition
to a hierarchical one (e.g. primary gets used first, then the secondary
comes into play if the primary is busy). I think that
master/subordinate
works in many cases where the non-master entity is not really slavish
in its behavior (like Stuart's disk drive example), and it does avoid
the emotionally charged half of the master/slave terminology. But
what of the cases like the ones cited above where the non-master
device really does follow the master slavishly? Does anyone have
good alternate terminology for this? Or have those industries been
using the master/slave terminology for so many years exactly
because it is the most accurate and concise despite being
"emotionally expensive"?
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