Becky Award
The Becky Award is a tongue-in-cheek award given out by the site. It is named after the sixteenth-century humanist Johannes Goropius Becanus, who claimed to have proved that the language of Eden was Dutch (incidentally, his mother tongue).
The award for 2006 went to Louann Brizendine for her bestselling book, The Female Brain, which makes two principal claims: that women use language very differently from men, and that the causes of these differences are hormonal. Language Log's contributors quoted Nature ("riddled with scientific errors"), tracked down references in little-known journals, and presented counterarguments using the same referenced sources that Brizendine's claims drew from to demonstrate lacking scientific reliability.
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Famous quotes containing the words becky and/or award:
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