Gender normative and non-normative morphemes usages study: preference, tolerance and refuse on autoidentification

Abstract

This study focuses on the use of a sociopragmatic methodology to research morphological phenomena. In particular, the study starts from the verification of new non-normative gender morphemes uses to make visible a part of the society that, according to the criticism of feminist linguistics to its normative usages, excludes them in its representation. So, the starting point of this study is to consider an associated perception of two phenomena: grammatical gender and (sociocultural) gender. This premise is treated as a sociocultural conditioning that enables the implementation of sociopragmatic research tools. The designed tool has enabled to determinate, on a scale of degrees, the preference, tolerance and refusal to these new gender morpheme uses in a given population segment, supporting the validity of sociopragmatic tools to study morphological phenomena.