The masculine form in grammatically gendered languages and its multiple interpretations: a challenge for our cognitive system

Gygax, Pascal; Sato, Sayaka; Öttl, Anton; Gabriel, Ute

doi:10.1016/j.langsci.2020.101328

Cited by 25 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Moreover, when later information in the text contradicts some aspect of the previously formed representation, the representation gets revised, which takes time. This can explain why incongruent (vs. congruent) gender information—for example, the information that a group, which was previously mentioned in the generic masculine form, is composed of women (vs. men)—leads to longer text processing times (for more detailed explanations, see Gygax et al, 2021; Irmen and Linner, 2005). Therefore, both mechanisms imply that grammatical gender information can influence gender representations.…”

Section: The Generic Masculinementioning

confidence: 97%

Gender Representations Elicited by the Gender Star Form

Körner

Abraham

Rummer

et al. 2022

Journal of Language and Social Psychology

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In many languages, masculine language forms are not only used to designate the male gender but also to operate in a generic fashion. This dual function has been found to lead to male biased representations when people encounter the generic masculine. In German, the now predominant substitute is the gender star form (e.g., Athlet*innen). In two experiments, we examined gender representations elicited when reading the gender star form (vs. generic masculine vs. pair forms). We found that, following the generic masculine, continuations about men (vs. women) were more frequently and more quickly judged to be compatible, replicating the male bias, even though participants were informed about the generic intention. Following the gender star form, a female bias in judgments (both Studies) and speed (only Study 2) occurred, which was somewhat smaller. Representations were most balanced when both male and female forms were mentioned.

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Section: The Generic Masculinementioning

confidence: 97%

Gender Representations Elicited by the Gender Star Form

Körner

Abraham

Rummer

et al. 2022

Journal of Language and Social Psychology

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“…In theory, the generic use of masculine forms intends to represent both genders, yet the assumption of its generic nature has been largely refuted in practice (Gabriel et al, 2018; Gygax et al, 2021). The masculine form is predominantly interpreted as referring to males and evoking predominantly masculine exemplars and images of masculinity (Moulton et al, 1978).…”

Section: Androcentric Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Different strategies can be employed to make language gender fair (Gabriel et al, 2018; Gygax et al, 2021). For some languages, a strategy that has been deemed useful is neutralization—that is, making both genders equally non-visible.…”

Section: Androcentric Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

Subtle Linguistic Cues Affecting Gender In(Equality)

Formanowicz

Hansen

2021

Journal of Language and Social Psychology

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Gender stereotypes and related gender discrimination are encoded in and transmitted through language, contributing to gender inequality. In this article, we review research findings on subtle linguistic means of communicating gender stereotypes and gender hierarchies. Our goal is to provide a comprehensive repository of various instances of subtle linguistic biases potentially useful in creating a text analysis toolbox to quantify gender bias in language. Our focus is predominantly on those areas that have received less attention both in research and in policy making. As gender inequalities are communicated through linguistic practices, attempts to change social reality include changes in language. Therefore, we suggest possible interventions for practices of gender equality in language.

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“…In addition, one could argue that specific uses of masculine singulars (7b) are even more biased towards male references since the specific meaning of the masculine is activated before the generic one. Consequently, when the referent is singular, listeners are even more likely to infer a male s-gender interpretation than when there is more than one referent (6b), where a mixed group inference is possible (Gygax et al, 2019). Nevertheless, examples such as (8) and (9) remain widespread in discourses of different types, and in forthcoming work (Burnett and Richy, 2019), we show the results of a psycholinguistic experiment which suggests that listeners do interpret masculine marked noun phrases as referring to women under certain conditions.…”

Section: Quantitative Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Jean does the dishes while Marie fixes the car: a qualitative and quantitative study of social gender in French syntax articles

Richy

Burnett

2019

French Language Studies

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This article addresses the question of gender bias observed in constructed examples of French syntax articles. Drawing our inspiration from Macaulay and Brice (1997) and Pabst et al. (2018)’s studies of English, we investigate the way women and men are depicted in constructed examples in syntax articles in French. We looked at grammatical functions, thematic roles and lexical choices and found a strong male bias in the use of gendered noun phrases (i.e. more references to men than to women; men are more likely to be in a subject position as well as being referred to via pronouns, and more likely to be agents and experiencers). Furthermore, women and men are not related to the same lexical choices. Besides, since French is a grammatical gender language where masculine gender can also be intended as gender neutral, we designed a second study to investigate masculine marked noun phrases (ambiguous masculines, AMs). When we compared AM noun phrases to female and male arguments in terms of grammatical functions and thematic roles, we found that, in production, they were different than true masculines. We discuss the implications of our results for the meaning of ‘gender neutral masculines’ and for practices anchoring gender discrimination.

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The masculine form in grammatically gendered languages and its multiple interpretations: a challenge for our cognitive system

Cited by 25 publications

References 46 publications

Gender Representations Elicited by the Gender Star Form

Gender Representations Elicited by the Gender Star Form

Subtle Linguistic Cues Affecting Gender In(Equality)

Jean does the dishes while Marie fixes the car: a qualitative and quantitative study of social gender in French syntax articles

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