Feminist language reform or feminist language planning refers to the effort, often of political and grassroots movements, to change how language is used to gender people, activities and ideas on an individual and societal level.[1] This initiative has been adopted in countries such as Sweden, Switzerland and Australia.[2][3][4][5]
Linguistic activism and feminist authorship stemming from second wave feminism in the 1960s and 70s began to draw attention to gender bias in language, including "the uncovering of the gendered nature of many linguistic rules and norms".[6] Feminists attended conferences and, as a way of activism, they interrupted to point out they were not feeling included because of linguistic uses.[7] Scholarship such as Dennis Baron'sGrammar and Gender and Anne Bodine's "Androcentrism in Prescriptive Grammar" uncovered historical male regulation to promote male-centric language such as the use of "he" as a generic pronoun.[8][9] In the 1970s sexism in language was a topic of discussion at an international feminist conference.[10]
The 1970s feminist movement led to the title Ms becoming more widely used. Previously, Miss and Mrs were used in order to indicate a woman's marital status. However, the title Mr does not imply marital status, so feminists saw it necessary to find a parallel term.[11] The use of these expressions is still a subject for feminists in few languages, such as Spanish.[12]
Exposition and analysis of sexism in language through a grassroots feminist linguistics movement continued throughout the 80's and 90's, including study across languages and speech communities such as Germany and France.[13][14] Study and documentation of gendered language has since spread to cover over 30 languages.[15]
Feminist language planning has more recently been instituted centrally in countries such as Sweden, Switzerland and Australia, with mixed results.[2][3][5]
Sweden has made strides towards shifting their language to fit a less misogynistic society. The introduction and widespread adoption, since 2000, of the word snippa for female genitalia is considered an example of successful feminist language reform in Swedish.[2]Snippa is a neutral, colloquial term for female genitalia originally promoted for use with and by little girls. The word snopp, akin to "willy" in English, was already in widespread use in Swedish. Like "willy", the word snopp is used with children to refer to the penis without any medical or vulgar connotations. Noting that standard Swedish lacked an equivalent neutral term for female genitalia, social worker Anna Kosztovics began promoting the use of snippa in 2000.[16] Through history, there have been many slang terms used for the woman's genitalia, including words such as fitta translated to "cunt", där nere translated to "down-there", and even mus translated to "mouse". In the 1990s, Swedish media started to bring the absence of such a word to light. It was not until the early 2000s that feminists and activists start using the word snippa to be identified with the female genitalia. Snippa's origins can be traced back to many different Swedish dialects. Its popular definition "refers to something small and/or narrow, for example a small pike or a narrow boat".[2] In regards to genitalia, "it might have been used to refer to female genitalia of cows and pigs in the early twentieth century".[2] Since the popularization of using the word Snippa, the Swedish Academy added the word to the 2006 Swedish Language Dictionary.
Some language reformers directly work with identifying and changing sexist undertones and patriarchal vocabulary through a method called "linguistic disruption".[17] An example: In the United States, the word "herstory" became popularized "to refer to history which is not only about men".[17]
Sweden has also shown efforts in language planning regarding changing misogynistic undertones in their vocabulary. The Swedish Association for Sexuality Education has promoted the word slidkrans to replace the word for "hymen", mödomshinna. The new word, slidkrans, is made up of the two parts slid, translating to "vaginal" and krans, translating to "garland". It lacks the connotations of the ideology of virginity and honour attached to mödomshinna."[2] The gender-neutral pronoun hen was originally promoted by feminists and the LGBT community. Controversial at the outset, it has gained wide acceptance in Sweden, is used in schools, and recently was added to dictionaries.[18]
Australia has been identified as a nation that officially promotes the feminist influence to its public bureaucracy by implementing feminist language reform across many institutions.[19] Since this planned social shift, Australia has seen changes in political and government leadership that aim to interfere with this reform, such as a shift towards a conservative-leaning government.[19] There are shifts that come from such movements that support them as well, such as the gender-neutral pronoun "they" being more widely accepted.[20]
The ongoing feminist movement acknowledges language as a "powerful instrument of patriarchy".[17] The goals set for linguistic reform aim to achieve linguistic equality of the sexes. A study of Australian newspapers from 1992 and 1996 found that the word "chairman" was used to describe all people holding the position, including women.[17] This is an example of a linguistic issue that feminists seek to reform. Occupational nomenclature reflects gender bias when "professional nomenclature used in employment-related contexts displays bias in favour of men leading to women's invisibility in this area."[17] The invisibility of women is a linguistic feminist issue because when encountering sentences predominantly using male pronouns, listeners are more likely to think of men before women and therefore women get overlooked.[20] Positions are gendered to be male and the "continuing, frequent use reflects the fact that far more men than women continue to occupy this position."[17] This study further investigated and found instances of female professionals being specified as women while men would just be titled with the profession itself, for example "female judge", "woman engineer", and "woman politician".[17]
Switzerland
Switzerland has attempted to implement feminist language reform both formally and informally. However, changes in Switzerland have proven to be complicated due to the fact that Switzerland is a multilingual country (with the major languages being German, French, and Italian). The Bulletin Suisse de Linguistique Appliquée (Swiss Bulletin of Applied Linguistics) addressed this issue in 2000 when it created a special issue dedicated to the feminization of language in Switzerland. The bulletin attempted to critique language in Switzerland by creating a composite image of all the languages in Switzerland and how they interact with gender.[21]
The most commonly spoken language in Switzerland is German. German is a gendered language. This has concerned some language activists due to the fact that many important societal positions such as judge and professor possess the gender of male and are often referred to as he/him. Activists worry that the gendering of those words discourages women from entering those fields. This facet of the German language is particularly important in Switzerland because it was historically used as a justification to restrict women's right to vote and pass the bar.[22]
Various attempts to implement feminist language reform have been undertaken in German-speaking Switzerland. The government and other organizations have attempted to implement language feminization in the realms of policy making, teaching, advertising, etc.[22]Feminization of language refers to when in writing or talking traditional male words are feminized by either using the feminine variant of the word or adding a feminine suffix.[23] However, these attempts have had only limited success. For example, private Swiss radio and television broadcasts still generally use the generic-masculine form of words.[21]
The second most commonly spoken language in Switzerland is French which is also a gendered language. The French language raises similar concerns to that of the German language. This is because many nouns (especially those of professions) are gendered. To address these concerns, the Swiss government has created a guide on the non-sexist use of the French language. However, these attempts at change have been met with little success. This is due to the fact that Switzerland has limited influence over the French language. Meanwhile, France and specifically the government backed Académie Française (the French council for matters relating to the French language) has resisted feminist language reform.[24]
French
Many French occupational nouns have, since the 17th century, only had a masculine default form. In the past, there was confusion when the job was held by a woman as the noun would still be treated as masculine although the position holder was feminine.[25] This then led to writers needing to clarify that they were referring to a woman through other clues in the sentence.
[26] Today, when these masculine words are modified to refer to a woman a suffix is added.[27] One way to combat this, deemed exclusionary grammar, was to use a masculine form in reference to a man, and a feminine form in reference to a woman in order to make women visible.[27] Other frequently used methods to clarify that the job was also hiring women include having the masculine form of the noun as the role, followed by H/F, or homme/femme (man/woman) and having the masculine form listed with the feminine form in parentheses.[27] Due to the fact that there are gendered distinctions in French nouns, employers must indicate that the job corresponds to either a man or a woman.[27]
English
Some groups have made an effort to advocate for the change from male nouns such as chairman and spokesman to gender non-specific nouns such as chairperson and spokesperson. However, critics question the efficacy of this approach as they argue that the gender non-specific nouns are only used in reference to a woman, and men are still referred to by male specific nouns.[11]
Regarding adding non-sexist language, some writers contend that this will only be effective in groups that already are devoted to non-sexist behavior. Contrarily, the non-sexist language will struggle to succeed if the speakers are not dedicated to the change.[11]
Sheila Michaels is credited with popularizing Ms. as a default form of address for women regardless of their marital status.[28][29]
Efforts to shift towards non-sexist language were supported by an important publisher in 1973 as part of a slow shift away from male-centric noun usage.[34]
In 1990, two important Toronto based newspapers, the Globe and Mail and the Star, modified their policies on sexist language in an effort to stop the usage of man as a general term. Additionally, the goal was to move away from any male nouns in these papers.[11]
Australian English
In Australia, there has been a promotion of "Ms." to take the place of "Miss" and "Mrs.", similar to the role of "Mr."[35] This title was meant to rectify gender imbalances, but met challenges as it was difficult to remove the other two widely utilized feminine titles and for all women to accept "Ms."[35] Both men and women play a role in this shift as people must accept utilizing "Ms." while others must accept being referred to as "Ms.," in order for this courtesy title to grow in popularity.[35] Education in Australia plays a large role in this language usage change as it is utilized to gain awareness about gender-bias in language and to formulate gender inclusive alternatives.[36] Furthermore, in Australian English, the usage of the generic masculine pronoun has greatly decreased and has largely been replaced by the singular they in unscripted public speech.[37] This results from non-sexist language reform promoting generic pronouns.[37]
Spanish
In Spanish, feminists have been looking for a language reform since the 1970s.[10] The changes proposed have been more related to the neutralization of expressions, and currently there are also proposals from the grassroots movement using a morpheme to include people who self-identify as non-binary. This is not only the case of the pronoun "elle" but also the use of -e as a morpheme instead of the gender morphemes, -a (feminine) and -o (masculine).[10]
Theory
The main focus of feminist language reform is to acknowledge the often unconscious ways that language both silences and emphasizes gender in negative ways. In some languages it is clear with gendered nouns how some words are gendered to associate those words with femaleness or maleness. Feminist philosophers argue that English, a non gendered language, still has the need for language reform.[20]
Previous language reform attempts to avoid sexist words or phrases were addressed in a symptomatic manner. Often in the workplace, employees were given pamphlets with lists of words to avoid or preferred words to use. Many modern day feminists argue that this is ineffective because it does not address the root of the problem or make the large scale changes to the language that they feel are necessary.[38]
A major part of the theory focuses on when words or phrases make one gender, typically women, subjugated or invisible compared to the other. The most popular examples are the pronoun “he” or the word “man”. Feminist language philosophers argue that these words participate in making women invisible by having them being used to refer to men and also women. The fact that the pronouns or words for the male gender can be also used to refer to the female gender shows how maleness is dominant and femaleness is subjugated.[20]
Feminist language theory also focuses on when words or phrases emphasize a break in gender norms. Clear examples of this are words like lady doctor or manageress. These are positions of power that are typically held by men. Therefore, when a woman holds them, they need a new title to emphasize their break of social norm.[38] It also goes both ways, with terms like male nurse referring to a man in a typically feminine role. Feminist language reform seeks to remove words like this because they help to sustain unhealthy gender norms.[20]
Some modern feminists, like Sergio Bolaños Cuellar, argue that feminist language reforms need to reverse the generic masculine forms and create a generic feminine form with words like he or man being replaced with she or woman.[39]
Linguistic theory, or the way people understand language, also influences the way linguistics plays into gender power structures. The structuralist approach to linguistic theory is based on the belief that language should be studied only looking within language instead of the ways it is influenced by external forces.[34] The 'cognitivist' approach focuses on the connection from language to the brain, and the 'sociocultural' approach highlights the role that culture and social context plays in language.[34] One's own interpretation of linguistic theory may change their assumptions on how best to change sexist language.
Some women's accounts suggest they are alienated from language or that they are not the owners of their words. In order to reclaim the power of language, some theorists argue that feminist language must be integrated.[34]Gloria Steinem said "We have terms like 'sexual harassment' and 'battered women.' A few years ago, they were just called 'life'", and theorists such as Crawford and Fox assert that this is essential in shifting gendered power dynamics.[40]
Relating to LGBT linguistics, the idea that the linguistic distinction between sex and gender changes our perception of identities is common among feminist linguistic theorists. When 'sex', referring to biological sex, is used, as opposed to 'gender', which refers to femininity and masculinity, as a marker of identity, feminist theorist Rhoda Unger suggests that gendered differences become naturalized, which is harmful for women.[40]
Implementation
Cases of feminist language planning have taken a largely sociolinguistic approach in which the goal is to enact social change through the reform of language and language use.[6] This approach to language planning is divided into four stages:
Fact-finding in which language issues are identified and reported.
Planning in which solutions to the issue are proposed.
Implementation in which agreed upon methods are tested and the final solution implemented.
Evaluation and Feedback in which the results of the plan are assessed for effectiveness and the overall effects of the plan are evaluated.[6][41]
Criticism
Writing about translation from Yiddish (a gendered language) to English in the Jewish Feminist Journal, Hinde Ena Burstin says that she does not like gender neutral language as in gendered languages, it is clear what gender is being talked about. For example, "poetese" being a gendered word for "woman poet". She says that it is similar to the "woman doctor" or "lady driver" which has been campaigned against, and that using "poet" on its own assumes that the poet is a man and that women have to be further identified. Burstin also mentioned that within her translations, using gender neutral language removed sexism.[42]
See also
Binnen-I, a convention for gender-neutral language in German
In linguistics, a grammatical gender system is a specific form of a noun class system, where nouns are assigned to gender categories that are often not related to the real-world qualities of the entities denoted by those nouns. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns inherently carry one value of the grammatical category called gender; the values present in a given language are called the genders of that language.
Womyn is one of several alternative political spellings of the English word women, used by some feminists. There are other spellings, including womban or womon (singular), and wombyn or wimmin (plural). Some writers who use such alternative spellings, avoiding the suffix "-man" or "-men", see them as an expression of female independence and a repudiation of traditions that define women by reference to a male norm. Recently, the term womxn has been used by intersectional feminists to indicate the same ideas while foregrounding or more explicitly including transgender women, non-binary women, intersex women, queer women, and women of color.
Gender-neutral language is language that avoids assumptions about the social gender or biological sex of people referred to in speech or writing. In contrast to most other Indo-European languages, English does not retain grammatical gender and most of its nouns, adjectives and pronouns are therefore not gender-specific. In most other Indo-European languages, nouns are grammatically masculine or grammatically feminine, or sometimes grammatically neuter, regardless of the actual gender of the referent.
A third-person pronoun is a pronoun that refers to an entity other than the speaker or listener. Some languages with gender-specific pronouns have them as part of a grammatical gender system, a system of agreement where most or all nouns have a value for this grammatical category. A few languages with gender-specific pronouns, such as English, Afrikaans, Defaka, Khmu, Malayalam, Tamil, and Yazgulyam, lack grammatical gender; in such languages, gender usually adheres to "natural gender", which is often based on biological sex. Other languages, including most Austronesian languages, lack gender distinctions in personal pronouns entirely, as well as any system of grammatical gender.
A gender-specific job title is a name of a job that also specifies or implies the gender of the person performing that job. For example, in English, the job titles stewardess and seamstress imply that the person is female, whilst the corresponding job titles steward and seamster imply that the person is male. A gender-neutral job title, on the other hand, is one that does not specify or imply gender, such as firefighter or lawyer. In some cases, it may be debatable whether a title is gender-specific; for example, chairman appears to denote a male, but the title is also applied sometimes to women.
Gender asymmetry is an aspect of the constructed international auxiliary language Esperanto which has been challenged by numerous proposals seeking to regularize both grammatical and lexical gender.
The English personal pronouns are a subset of English pronouns taking various forms according to number, person, case and grammatical gender. Modern English has very little inflection of nouns or adjectives, to the point where some authors describe it as an analytic language, but the Modern English system of personal pronouns has preserved some of the inflectional complexity of Old English and Middle English.
In the Dutch language, the gender of a noun determines the articles, adjective forms and pronouns that are used in reference to that noun. Gender is a complicated topic in Dutch, because depending on the geographical area or each individual speaker, there are either three genders in a regular structure or two genders in a dichotomous structure. Both are identified and maintained in formal language.
Gender-neutral language or gender-inclusive language is language that avoids reference towards a particular sex or gender. In English, this includes use of nouns that are not gender-specific to refer to roles or professions, formation of phrases in a coequal manner, and discontinuing the collective use of male or female terms. For example, the words policeman and stewardess are gender-specific job titles; the corresponding gender-neutral terms are police officer and flight attendant. Other gender-specific terms, such as actor and actress, may be replaced by the originally male term; for example, actor used regardless of gender. Some terms, such as chairman, that contain the component -man but have traditionally been used to refer to persons regardless of sex are now seen by some as gender-specific. An example of forming phrases in a coequal manner would be using husband and wife instead of man and wife. Examples of discontinuing the collective use of terms in English when referring to those with unknown or indeterminate gender as singular they, and using humans, people, or humankind, instead of man or mankind.
Gender neutrality in languages with grammatical gender is the usage of wording that is balanced in its treatment of the genders in a non-grammatical sense. For example, advocates of gender-neutral language challenge the traditional use of masculine nouns and pronouns when referring to two or more genders or to a person of an unknown gender in most Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic languages. This stance is often inspired by feminist ideas about gender equality. Gender neutrality is also used colloquially when one wishes to be inclusive of people who identify as non-binary genders or as genderless.
A genderless language is a natural or constructed language that has no distinctions of grammatical gender—that is, no categories requiring morphological agreement between nouns and associated pronouns, adjectives, articles, or verbs.
Generic antecedents are representatives of classes, referred to in ordinary language by another word, in a situation in which gender is typically unknown or irrelevant. These mostly arise in generalizations and are particularly common in abstract, theoretical or strategic discourse. Examples include "readers of Wikipedia appreciate their encyclopedia", "the customerwho spends in this market".
A system of grammatical gender, whereby every noun was treated as either masculine, feminine, or neuter, existed in Old English, but fell out of use during the Middle English period; therefore, Modern English largely does not have grammatical gender. Modern English lacks grammatical gender in the sense of all noun classes requiring masculine, feminine, or neuter inflection or agreement; however, it does retain features relating to natural gender with particular nouns and pronouns to refer specifically to persons or animals of one or other sexes and neuter pronouns for sexless objects. Also, in some cases, feminine pronouns are used by some speakers when referring to ships, to churches, and to nation states and islands.
Feminist language reform has proposed gender neutrality in languages with grammatical gender, such as Spanish. Grammatical gender in Spanish refers to how Spanish nouns are categorized as either masculine or feminine. As in other Romance languages—such as Portuguese, to which Spanish is very similar—a group of both men and women, or someone of unknown gender, is usually referred to by the masculine form of a noun and/or pronoun. Advocates of gender-neutral language modification consider this to be sexist, and exclusive of gender non-conforming people. They also stress the underlying sexism of words whose feminine form has a different, often less prestigious meaning. Some argue that a gender neutral Spanish can reduce gender stereotyping, deconstructing sexist gender roles and discrimination in the workplace.
In Spanish, grammatical gender is a linguistic feature that affects different types of words and how they agree with each other. It applies to nouns, adjectives, determiners, and pronouns. Every Spanish noun has a specific gender, either masculine or feminine, in the context of a sentence. Generally, nouns referring to males or male animals are masculine, while those referring to females are feminine. In terms of importance, the masculine gender is the default or unmarked, while the feminine gender is marked or distinct.
The Japanese language has some words and some grammatical constructions associated with men or boys, while others are associated with women or girls. Such differences are sometimes called "gendered language". In Japanese, speech patterns associated with women are referred to as onna kotoba or joseigo, and those associated with men are referred to as danseigo.
The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing: For writers, editors, and speakers was first published in 1980 by Casey Miller and Kate Swift. It was the second book produced by the two in an effort to raise awareness of issues concerning gender in the English language.
In linguistics, feminization refers to the process of re-classifying nouns and adjectives which as such refer to male beings, including occupational terms, as feminine. This is done most of the time by adding inflectional suffixes denoting a female.
In German, a medial capital I is a non-standard, mixed case typographic convention used to indicate gender inclusivity for nouns having to do with people, by using a capital letter 'I' inside the word surrounded by lower-case letters. An example is the word LehrerInnen. With a lower case I in that position, Lehrerinnen is just the standard word for "female teachers".
Iel is a neo-pronoun in the French language intended as an alternative to the gender-specific pronouns elle ("she") and il ("he"). It has been adopted by the Le Robert dictionary but is not officially accepted by the Académie Française.
↑ Baron, Dennis (1987). Grammar and Gender. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
↑ Bodine, Anne (1975). "Androcentrism in prescriptive grammar: singular 'they', sex-indefinite 'he', and 'he or she'". Language in Society. 4 (2): 129–146. doi:10.1017/s0047404500004607. S2CID146362006.
↑ Fleischman, S. (1997). "The battle of feminism and bon usage: instituting nonsexist usage in French". French Review.
↑ Hellinger, M.; Bußmann, H. (2001). Gender across languages The linguistic representation of women and men. Amsterdam, the Netherlands: John Benjamin's Publishing Company. pp.Preface.
1 2 Winter, Jo (December 23, 2010). "'Trajectories of Agency' and Discursive Identities in Education: A Critical Site in Feminist Language Planning". Current Issues in Language Planning. 7 (2–3): 171–198. doi:10.2167/cilp093.0. S2CID144059873.
↑ Fleischman, Suzanne (1997). "The Battle of Feminism and Bon Usage: Instituting Nonsexist Usage in French". The French Review. 70 (6): 834–844. JSTOR398544.
↑ Majstorovic, Danijela; Lassen, Inger (2011). Living with Patriarchy: Discursive Constructions of Gendered Subjects across Cultures. John Benjamins Publishing Company. p.74. ISBN9789027206367.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
