6/11/2023 0 Comments Gender intensity![]() Most research on grammatical gender and gender representations has reflected the extent to which formal features of a language, such as the existence and number of grammatical gender categories (i.e., gender marking of pronouns, and/or nouns), may contribute to (biased) gender-related representations.Īccording to Dixon (1982), a language possesses grammatical gender when the following three criteria are met: (1) all nouns in a language are grouped into classes, (2) there is grammatical agreement between nouns and their dependent words or elements (e.g., articles, adjectives, verbs), and (3) the class membership of nouns shows a considerable semantic correlation with sex. In this paper, however, we wish to concentrate on another characteristic feature of language that has kept psycholinguists particularly busy for the last two decades: grammatical gender. These are some examples of the way language might constrain the way we think of women and men. Typically, verbs denoting agency (i.e., more active) are more present in the immediate neighborhood of the word men than the word women, and nouns and adjectives (i.e., more passive) more present in the immediate neighborhood of women (e.g., Formanowicz et al., 2017). Others have also documented biased uses of verbs and nouns when people refer to women or men. Referring to a woman and a man or to a man and a woman is not perceived as being the same, and the resulting biased representations – toward the first person mentioned – have been well documented ( Hegarty et al., 2016). For example, at a syntactic level, word order may signal to readers or listeners specific semantic and societal hierarchies (e.g., Hegarty et al., 2016 Kesebir, 2017). There are different ways that this can happen. However, language contributes to biased gender representations in other ways, with its intrinsic characteristics creeping into the way we perceive women and men. Consequently, one can easily argue that language biases gender representations through its communicative functions. For example, ordinary people, as well as the media, communicate gender-stereotypical expectations with regard to gender-appropriate behaviors and roles for women and men, and such communication might lead individuals to define themselves and behave in accord with these expectations (e.g., Hannover, 2002 Sczesny et al., 2018). As such, language acts not only as a vehicle for beliefs, but also as a tool that builds them. The way we perceive women and men in society is partly grounded in the way we speak or write about these two groups. We also offer a critical discussion of any endeavor to classify languages according to grammatical gender. Our index goes beyond existing ones in that it provides specific dimensions relevant to those interested in psychological and sociological impacts of language on the way we perceive women and men. Our index is based on five main language groups (i.e., grammatical gender languages, languages with a combination of grammatical gender and natural gender, natural gender languages, genderless languages with few traces of grammatical gender and genderless languages) and three sets of specific features (morphology, masculine-male generics and asymmetries). In this paper, we present a language index for researchers interested in the effect of grammatical gender on the mental representations of women and men. Although such variations across languages offer interesting grounds for legitimate cross-linguistic comparisons, pertinent characteristics of grammatical systems – especially in terms of their gender asymmetries – have to be clearly identified. Psycholinguistic investigations of the way readers and speakers perceive gender have shown several biases associated with how gender is linguistically realized in language. 7Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany.6Institute for Psychology, University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany.5Department of Psychology, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.4School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom.3Institute of French Language and Literature, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.2Department for German Language and Literature, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.1Department of Psychology, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland.Pascal Mark Gygax 1*, Daniel Elmiger 2, Sandrine Zufferey 3, Alan Garnham 4, Sabine Sczesny 5, Lisa von Stockhausen 6, Friederike Braun 7 and Jane Oakhill 4
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