Grammatical gender and sexism

• Authors: Marta Dąbrowska
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

PL

The objective of the paper is to investigate the attitude speakers of Polish have towards masculine and feminine forms of personal titles and names of professions and to discuss how their grammatical gender may evoke biased treatment on the part of the language users. The observations are drawn on the basis of the analysis of a questionnaire distributed among 56 Polish men and women whose task was, among others, to provide the names of certain professions following the definitions provided, state who (man or a woman) they imagine on hearing certain names of professions, and evaluate the relative rank of the professions (either in masculine or feminine gender). The respondents were also asked direct questions concerning the need for the existence of feminine counterparts of certain generically masculine titles. The analysis of the answers demonstrated mixed attitudes towards this need, with some persons opposing the idea on both linguistic and/or emotional grounds, while others stressed the necessity for maintaining balance in language in this respect. The results of the evaluation and recognition questions, however, did show that certain names of professions, when in their masculine form, were still predominantly associated with males, whereas the masculine forms of a fair number of professions and titles (the ones associated with a higher degree of power) were always ranked more highly than their feminine equivalents. It may thus be concluded that even though the users of Polish may consciously deny this fact, the grammatical form of the personal title or a profession may be a source of sexism towards the persons they describe.

Keywords

PL

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Jagielloński
• Journal: Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis
• Year: 2008
• Volume: 125

Dates

published

2008

online

2015-02-25

Contributors

author

Marta Dąbrowska