Language and gender
1. English
a) use of titles
> original situation: Master – Mister, Mrs – Miss (for age only); Master now obsolete while the fem. forms came to be associated with marital status; Ms /miz/ was introduced in 1940s and met with a considerable success
b) generic masculine he
> claim: generic (i.e., including male and female) use of he is a myth: speakers interpret it in male-exclusive terms or the interpretation including women is secondary because of formal similarity
Suggestions:
> singular they, e.g. Somebody phoned... Did they... (problem: grammatical contradiction)
> sex-indefinite reference, e.g. he or she, he/she, s/he (problem: awkward in discourse, restricted to written English)
> various coinages: co, tey, hesh, thon, xe, E, po, thon (problem: very limited success)
> epicene (i.e. may refer to both males and females) pronouns (Baron 1986: 205-209)
1850 ne, nis, nim; hiser
1868 en
1884 thon, thons; hi, hes, hem; le, lis, lim; unus, talis; hiser, himer, ip, ips
1888 ir, iro, im (sg.); thir, thiro, thim (pl.)
1889 ons
1890 e, es, em
1891 hizer
1912 he’er, him’er, his’er, his’er’s
1927 ha, hez, hem; on; hesh, hizzer, himmer; on
1935 himorher
1940 heesh (A.A. Milne)
1970 co, cos (IE *ko); ve, vis, ver
1971 ta, ta-men
1972 tey, term, tem; him/herself; shes, shim, shims, shimself; ze (Ger. sie), zim, zees, zeeself; per (person), pers;
1973 na, nan, naself; it, s/he; s/he, him/er, his-or-her; shem, herm; j/e, m/a, m/e, m/es, m/oi, jee, jeue
1974 ne, nis, ner; en, as, ar; hisorher, herorhis, ve, vis, vim; shem, hem, hes
1975 hir, herim; ey, eir, em, uh; h’orsh’it
1976 ho, hom, hos, homself (Lat. homo); he or she, (s)he; she, herm, hs
1977 po, xe, jhe; E, E’s, Em; e, ris, rim; sheme, shis, shem, heshe, hisher, himmer; em, ems
1978 ae; hir; hesh, hizer, hirm, sheehy, sap (Homo sapiens); heesh, hiser(s), herm, hermself
1979 one; et, ets, etself; hir, hires, hirem, hirself; shey, sheir, sheirs, hey, heir, heirs
1980 it
1981 heshe, hes, hem
1982 shey, shem, sheir; E, Ir
1984 hiser; hes; hann
1985 herm
c) generic man
> claim: generic man is interpreted as ‘male-exclusive’, e.g., God made the country, and man made the town. vs. Man is destined to be a prey to woman (cf. G der Mensch (m.), Sw. människa (f.), Da., Nw. menneske (n.) ‘human being’)
d) generic -man
> interpreted similarly when a derivational suffix in, e.g. spokesman, postman, mailman, cameraman; suggestions: sexneutral alternatives: spokesperson, mail carrier, camera operator
> woman – women > womon – womyn, *human, *humanity (cf. Lat. homo) (these supposed etymologies are reminiscent of those suggested by Rowland Jones, an 18th century Welsh philologist, e.g., Eve < E-ve ‘him, she was
taken out of him’; marry < mi-ar-hi ‘me upon her’)
> problem in relation between man and -man; arguments pro: irregular plural in both, not *-mans; arguments con: reduced vowel in both the singular and plural of the compound
e) occupational terms
> negative semantic space – there are fewer nouns referring to women in English and they are less prestigious
> narrowing and derogation of female terms: sir/dame, master/mistress, bachelor/spinster; whore (‘lover’ > ‘female prostitute’); girl (ME girle ‘young person of either sex’ > Mod.E. also offensive for woman of any age or female servant/employee); witch (‘male/female sorcerer’ > ‘usu. female sorcerer, ugly old woman’)
> female markers: prefixal woman, female, e.g., woman doctor; suffixes -ette, -ess, and suffixal -woman, e.g., congresswoman
> male markers: prefixal male, e.g., male prostitute, nurse
f) lexical gaps
> lexical gaps in words denoting positive features of female sexuality, e.g., lack of equivalent of male virility
> restriction to one sex through suffixes: man-servant, maid-servant, he-devil, she-devil
> restriction in social function: minister, baker, lawyer, bishop vs. nurse, secretary, dressmaker
2. Polish (Herbert and Nykiel-Herbert 1987)
a) gender in the sg.
> semantic agreement is possible only for sex-definite and sex-indefinite nouns which refer to males; nouns referring to females have to take formal agreement
ten stary-MASC. mężczyzna-MASC. vs. ta stara-FEM. kobieta-FEM.
ten stary-MASC. chłopina-FEM. *ta stara-FEM. babsztyl-MASC.
ten stary-MASC. fajtłapa-FEM. Janek-MASC. ta wstrętna-FEM. fajtłapa-FEM. Zosia-FEM.
ten stary-MASC. flejtuch-MASC. Janek-MASC. *ta wstrętna-FEM. flejtuch-MASC. Zosia-FEM.
b) gender in the pl.
> recall the distinction between masc.pers. (virile) and non-masc.pers. (non-virile) in the pl.
> claim: non-masc.pers. gender carries pejorative connotations: females in masc.pers. only in company of men (Janek I Marysia przynieśli ciastka), derrogation of males to non-virile, e.g, profesorzy > profesory, dyrektorzy > dyrektory, studenci > studenty
c) generics
> possible male-only interpretation of Pol. człowiek?
> note the differences in agreement with epicene osoba, determined formally within the sentence and formally or semantically outside, e.g., Ofiara została przewieziona do szpitala. Lekarze podali mu/jej krew.
d) lexicon
> fem. term is usually derived from the masc. (but wdowa > wdowiec)
> in masc.-fem. pairs of occupational terms, the fem. form is less prestigious or unacceptable, e.g., sekretarka, doktorka,psycholożka, fotograficzka, geolożka, lingwistka
> the fem. form may be blocked by an already existing word, e.g., cesarka, kominiarka, marynarka, szoferka
> masc. forms are available with the prefixal męska, e.g., męska prostytutka
> names and address: children normally receive their father’s name; fem. names are derived from the masc. name, e.g.,Misia Sertowa (Sert), Pawlakowa/Pawlakówna (Pawlak), Pankiewiczowa/Pankiewiczówna (Pankiewicz), Profesorowa Machowska (Prof. Machowski) (cf. also Zygmuntowstwo for the couple)
> lexical gaps, e.g. lack of comparable male equivalent of the feminine noun dziewica
References
Baranowski, Maciej. 2002. “Current usage of the epicene pronoun in written English”, Journal of Sociolinguistics 6, 3:378-397.
Baron, Dennis E. 1986. Grammar and gender. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Herbert, Robert K. and Barbara Nykiel-Herbert. 1987. “Explorations in linguistic sexism: A contrastive sketch”, Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 21: 47-86.
Koniuszaniec, Gabriela and Hanka Błaszkowska. 2003. “Language and gender in Polish”, in: Marlis Hellinger and Hadumod Bußmann (eds.), Gender across languages. The linguistic representation of women and men. Vol. 3. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 259-285.
Language and gender page (http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/bucholtz/lng/) for the best selection of links