Způsoby označování osob z hlediska ne/binarity genderu: kvantitativní sonda do titulních stran vybraných českých periodik

• Authors: Vít Kolek

Title variants

EN

Person reference and gender (non-)binarity: a quantitative survey of the front pages of Czech periodicals

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

Criticising the use of the generic masculine, feminist and gender linguists have proposed different alternatives. In the Czech context, the following three types of alternatives can be distinguished: (1) feminisation, (2) neutralisation and paraphrases, and (3) making nonbinary persons linguistically more visible. Empirical studies on the usage frequency of these alternatives, however, are lacking. This paper addresses this issue by analysing agentive nouns and the feminisation of surnames in selected Czech newspapers. The results show that in references to individual women almost exclusive use is made of feminine expressions. Mixed-gender groups are still largely referred to using the generic masculine. In only a minority of occurrences are neutralising strategies used to refer to persons. What is more common, however, is to fi nd neutralising strategies being used where the intention of expressing gender fairness was probably not the reason for their use, as referring to persons is not their primary function. Neither pair forms nor graphic symbols for non-binary reference are used. The surnames of female foreign nationals are almost always feminised, even though this is not necessary and the texts provide other linguistic means of identifying the persons as women. Based on an analysis of the distribution of generically-intended masculine expressions in the analysed texts, I propose dividing them into two types according to whether or not there is an obvious inclusion of females and non-binary persons.

Keywords

EN

gender; generic masculine; gender-inclusive Czech; non-binary persons; neutralisation; feminisation of surnames

Discipline

• SOCIOLOGY: SOCIOLOGY

• Publisher: Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Gender a výzkum / Gender and Research
• Year: 2022
• Volume: 23
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 62-81
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Vít Kolek

• Gender a výzkum / Gender and Research Sociologický ústav AV ČR, v.v.i. / Institute of Sociology CAS, Jilská 1, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic