Although previous work on sexist linguistic structures has identified the causes of sexism in language as stemming from an androcentric world view, it has not described the social and semiotic processes involved in the historic production and reproduction of this kind of linguistic sexism. This article uses the three processes of iconisation, fractal recursivity, and erasure to bring together what appear to be disparate phenomena (such as the masculine generic, and even the very existence of the feminine grammatical gender) into a unifying theory. Iconisation results in the binary division of humanity into females and males; fractal recursivity explains how this division was projected onto language; and erasure demonstrates how certain discourses have been ignored, to the profit of others. A Queer critique of the two concepts of binarity and markedness (which arise as a result of iconisation) opens up exciting new ways to approach sexism in language, and to revitalise research in this area.
La literatura, el folclore, los diccionarios y las gramáticas han utilizado y explicado las manifestaciones lingüísticas de modo que se adapten a la idea de que lo masculino debe ser el criterio universal (Spender 1980). Frente a estos antecedentes históricos, las feministas durante los años 70 y, posteriormente, los defensores de lo políticamente correcto de los 90, comenzaron una batalla contra el sexismo en el lenguaje, proporcionando soluciones en forma de pautas, folletos, glosarios, etc (Key 1975, Maggio 1987, 1991, McMinn 1991).El presente artículo explora la afirmación: "male equals positive and normal, female equals negative and abnormal" (Lakoff 1975, 2001) y, al prestar atención a desviaciones semánticamente parciales, proporcionar una visión histórica de equivalentes masculinos y femeninos. El corpus se construirá a partir de diccionarios monolingües y bilingües, diccionarios de expresiones idiomáticas, argot y proverbios para ofrecer un estudio diacrónico del lenguaje sexista, principalmente en inglés y español. Los sinónimos de algunas palabras se extraerán de páginas web y, para medir la actualidad de algunos de los ejemplos, se utilizarán tres corpus en línea. Se analizará también el marco sociocultural de estos términos y expresiones para ver hasta qué punto han moldeado ambas sociedades y qué efectos tienen actualmente en la vida de las mujeres. ; Literature, folklore, dictionaries and grammars have used and explained language manifestations to conform to the idea that male should be the standard of humanity (Spender 1980). Against this historical background, feminists during the 1970s and later politically correct advocates of the 1990s started battling against sexism in language, providing solutions, in the form of guidelines, booklets, glossaries, etc (Key 1975, Maggio 1987,1991, McMinn 1991).The present article explores the value assumption: "male equals positive and normal, female equals negative and abnormal" (Lakoff 1975, 2001) and, by paying attention to semantic biased deviations, gives a historical account of male and female counterparts. The corpus will be drawn from monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, dictionaries of idiomatic expressions, slang and proverbs to offer a diachronic study of sexist language mainly in English and in Spanish. Synonyms for certain terms will be drawn from Web pages and to measure the currency of some of the examples three on-line corpora will be used. The socio-cultural framework of these terms and expressions will be studied to see to what extent they have moulded both societies and what effects they have in women's lives today.
"Innovations and Challenges: Women, Language and Sexism brings together an outstanding collection of internationally recognised researchers to recontextualise some of the questions raised by feminist thinkers 40 years ago. The topic of gender and language has evolved tremendously in the last decades and research has contributed in many ways to a heightened awareness of gender-inflected discourse. Many of the issues discussed in the 70s and 80s, however, continue to be a problem as sexism, racism and ageism in discourses in private and institutional contexts have manifested in fresh ways in recent years. In linguistics and discourse-oriented applied research, the question of plain sexism has been side-lined since sexuality and gender identity seem to be the present concerns of the great majority of gender research. By taking linguistically mediated violence as a central topic, this collection's main objective is to explore the different and subtle ways sexism and violence are materialised in discursive practices. In doing so, this book: Takes a multi-stranded investigation into the linguistic and semiotic representations of sexism in societies today from an applied linguistic and semiotic perspective; Combines critical discourse analysis, multimodality, interactional sociolinguistics and corpus methodologies to look at language, visuals and semiotic resources in the context of consumerist culture; Examines the conflicted position of women and the discourses of discrimination that still exists in every strand of modern societies; Contextualises pervasive gender issues and reviewing key gender and language topics that changed the ways we interpret interaction from the early seventies till the present; Focuses on institutional discourses and the questions of how women are excluded or discriminated against in the workplace, the law and educational contexts. This book is essential reading for those studying and researching gender across a wide range of disciplines"--
This paper examines sexism in the Dagbanli language of northern Ghana. The focus is on the vocabulary, and on popular terms and expressions that name, label or describe males and females. Although reference is occasionally made to dictionary definitions, the analyses of gender biases and stereotyping are based on speakers' interpretations and descriptions of the cultural practices that provide the context for the use of words and their proper interpretation. The study reveals biased assumptions in the meanings of words that refer to males and females and the use of words to create and affirm gendered stereotypes of the two sexes. Similar words that refer to males and females do not have equivalent meanings; there are more labels that denigrate and trivialise females than males, and the labelling shows that different standards of conduct are set for males and females.
Although research on language and gender has focused largely on gendered languages, not much attention has been given to genderless languages. The current study attempts to explore gender ideologies and sexism in Ga, which is a genderless language. Based on an interdisciplinary approach to this multifaceted problem, the author aims at critically reviewing the construction and representation of gender identities through language using Glick and Fiske's ambivalent sexism theory and feminist critical discourse analysis of data collected from focus group discussions and interviews. Among other things, this study shows how discourses of biological essentialism are used to justify what is presented as a natural gender order.
It's a Sunday morning, I get up and sit on the couch to drink my coffee, I drink a newspaper of national circulation, I begin to look at it to see if there is something that calls me the attention, on the front page I read the headlines with news of everyday topics; politics, health, economy, etc. In the lower left margin the first thing you notice is a young girl in Swimsuit that won a beauty contest. I keep turning the newspaper sheets and I I stop in a story entitled Commitment to speed shelter for underprivileged children ; Es un domingo por la mañana, me levanto y me siento en el sillón para tomarme el café, tomoun periódico de circulación nacional, empiezo a ojearlo para ver si hay algo que me llame laatención, en primera plana leo los titulares con noticias de temas cotidianos; política, salud,economía, etc. En el margen inferior izquierdo lo primero que se nota es a una jovencita entraje de baño que ganó un concurso de belleza. Sigo pasando las hojas del periódico y medetengo en una noticia titulada Compromiso de apresurar amparo a niños desvalidos.
Este estudio ofrece una perspectiva general sobre la comunicación no sexista, pero no se agota únicamente en este objetivo. Plantea primero la posibilidad de aparición de sesgos ideológicos en cualquier disciplina científica, Lingüística incluida, y, desde este punto de partida, sirviéndose de la noción de mito lingüístico, analiza algunos fenómenos centrales en la polémica sobre el lenguaje no sexista que constituyen el núcleo teórico de la obra: el masculino como término no marcado, el principio de arbitrariedad del lenguaje, el principio de economía lingüística y el carácter genérico del masculino. A continuación, sigue revisando otras mitologías relacionadas con este debate que se internan principalmente en el terreno del análisis del discurso, como los topoi inmanentistas o la caracterización ideológica de este asunto desde la política y la planificación lingüísticas
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Ambivalenter Sexismus besteht aus offen feindseligen (hostiler Sexismus) und scheinbar wohlwollenden (benevolenter Sexismus) Sichtweisen auf Frauen. Obwohl anzunehmen ist, dass ambivalent-sexistische Einstellungen nicht nur gegenüber Frauen, sondern auch gegenüber Mädchen bestehen und sich bereits im Jugendalter herausbilden, wurden auf Mädchen bezogene Einstellungen und jugendliche Stichproben bisher kaum untersucht, vermutlich auch aufgrund des Fehlens eines geeigneten Messinstrumentes. Wir stellen ein deutschsprachiges Instrument zur Messung ambivalent-sexistischer Einstellungen gegenüber jugendlichen Mädchen zum Einsatz bei Jugendlichen und jungen Erwachsenen vor. Zur Prüfung der Kriteriumsvalidität untersuchten wir mit 1 128 Jugendlichen den Zusammenhang zwischen ambivalent-sexistischen Einstellungen gegenüber Mädchen und einem Geschlechtergerechtigkeitsindex. Die Konstruktvalidität prüften wir in 2 Stichproben junger Erwachsener (Studierende der Sozialwissenschaften, N = 441, und des Polizeivollzugsdienstes, N = 153), die zusätzlich ein etabliertes Inventar zur Messung des ambivalenten Sexismus gegenüber Frauen sowie verwandte Skalen ausfüllten. Die Ergebnisse verweisen auf Reliabilität und Validität des Inventars zur Messung des Ambivalenten Sexismus gegenüber jugendlichen Mädchen (ASI-Mäd).
