All Things Linguistic

Sexist practices are those that contribute to demeaning or ignoring women (or men) or to stereotyping either sex; sexism is often not a matter of intention but of effect. These guidelines reflect a growing body of research which indicates that many people find sexist language offensive. Although linguists (like all scholars) need to guard against sexist linguistic and scholarly practices in their main texts and accompanying citations and acknowledgments, sexism in the linguistics literature is most often obvious in constructed example sentences. Sometimes this is the result of an effort to inject humor in otherwise dry prose, sometimes it is due to the use of traditional examples, and sometimes it is simply due to inattention.[…]

1. Whenever possible, use plurals (people, they) and other appropriate alternatives, rather than only masculine pronouns and “pseudo-generics” such as man, unless referring specifically to males.

In glossing forms from another language, it is possible to use forms such as 3ps (third person singular) in place of pronouns, thus avoiding the introduction of gender-specificity or asymmetry when it is absent in the original.[…]

2. Avoid generic statements which inaccurately refer only to one sex (e.g., “Speakers use language for many purposes-to argue with their wives…” or “Americans use lots of obscenities but not around women”).

3. Whenever possible, use terms that avoid sexual stereotyping. Such terms as server, professor, and nurse can be effectively used as gender neutral; marked terms like waitress, lady professor, and male nurse cannot.

4. Use parallel forms of reference for women and men, e.g. do not cite a male scholar by surname only and a female scholar by first name or initial plus surname.

5. In constructing example sentences, avoid gender-stereotyped characterizations.. Avoid peopling your examples exclusively with one sex, or consistently putting reference to males before reference to females. (Historically, grammar books stipulated that references to males should precede references to females-see Ann Bodine. Androcentrism in prescriptive grammar. Language in Society 4:129-46, 1975.) The use of sex-ambiguous names such as Chris, Dana, Kim, Lee, and Pat will sometimes help avoid stereotyping either males or females

This document is from 1996, and it’s definitely apparent when reading older linguistics texts that a lot has changed in linguistics. Classic works from the 1970s and earlier tend to have example sentences populated exclusively by males unless they’re using the transitive verbs “kiss” or “love” in which case the objects are invariably female. (I’m now wondering if anyone has ever done a sociological study of linguistics example sentences because seriously that would be fascinating.)

Although things have gotten a lot better since then, I still notice a tendency for a lot of linguists to reach first for a sentence involving “John” or “the man” or “the boys” when they’re constructing an example off the top of their head, perhaps because we’ve read the classic literature and/or been taught by people who have, perhaps because we still live in a society that thinks of maleness as default. I’m in the process of training myself to make most of my example sentences about “Mary” or “the woman” or “the children” to provide a counterbalance, but retraining one’s defaults is admittedly slow going. (Although in an ideal world we could just put gender-neutral names in example sentences, at the moment I think that a series of Pats, Sams, and Alexes would just be assumed male, so I think it’s still useful at this stage to have explicitly female representation in example sentences.)

sinksanksunk:

allthingslinguistic:

sinksanksunk asked you:

Hi! I’ve seen a couple of english-speakers use the term “person” and then use the pronoun “she” to refer to the aforementionned person even though it seems to be intended as gender neutral, I’m just wondering if you know where this usage comes from? I always…

Well, yes, I thought about that, and I’ve seen examples of feminist texts using “she” as a default. But in this case, the examples I’ve heard were never used by people that seemed especially concerned about gender equality and the key thing is that the presence of “she” seemed to be triggered by the presence of “person”. I’ve never heard anyone spontaneously use the feminine as default unless they were feminists or they had used the word person first. So I’m pretty sure that there’s a link with this specific word.

It’s not a widespread occurrence and I don’t remember most of the examples I’ve heard but I can give you at least one :

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. (…)”

This is part of a quote from David Foster Wallace. Why would he be using “she” all of a sudden? I haven’t read much by him but I think his language was leaning towards male-centeredness in general. (And that’s without mentioning that this “person” he’s talking about is far from being an abstraction and is probably, uh, himself.)

And the reason I’m mentioning other languages is because, while I’m not sure about Spanish or German, I do know that in French, it’s not uncommon to first refer to “une personne” and to follow with “elle” in a gender-neutral context. It’s not done to avoid being male-centered; our usage of pronouns is actually more male-centered than English’s, but it’s really this one word that makes a difference. Person. Personne. And maybe others. There has to be something going on with this English she/person combo, it sounds like a mistake a French-speaker would make but I’ve heard it coming from native English-speakers, so… what’s up with that. (Sorry for insisting so much, ahah.)

Interesting. (And sorry for the delay in replying). I know I’ve also seen the French example you mention, and quite possibly in German/Spanish although I’m not sure. I really don’t know what would be leading to the use of “she/her” as a pronoun for “person” in these contexts. My speculation might be something more along the lines of an author wanting to evoke a particular gender in a particular context, rather than influences from other languages, but unfortunately being a linguist doesn’t give me magical abilities to know all the things about language, so your (or anyone else’s) guess is as good as mine here.

If this doesn’t make you cringe at least a dozen times while reading it, you’re probably a terrible person. A classic piece of shock satire by Douglas R. Hofstadter: go read the whole thing. Excerpt:

Another of Niss Moses’ shrill objections is to the age-old differentiation of whites from blacks by the third-person pronouns “whe” and “ble.” Ble promotes an absurd notion: that what we really need in English is a single pronoun covering both races. Numerous suggestions have been made, such as “pe,” “tey,” and others, These are all repugnant to the nature of the English language, as the average white in the street will testify, even if whe has no linguistic training whatsoever. Then there are advocates of usages such as “whe or ble,” “whis or bler,” and so forth. This makes for monstrosities such as the sentence “When the next President takes office, whe or ble will have to choose whis or bler cabinet with great care, for whe or ble would not want to offend any minorities.” Contrast this with the spare elegance of the normal way of putting it, and there is no question which way we ought to speak. There are, of course, some yapping black libbers who advocate writing “bl/whe” everywhere, which, aside from looking terrible, has no reasonable pronunciation. Shall we say “blooey” all the time when we simply mean “whe”? Who wants to sound like a white with a chronic sneeze?

One of the more hilarious suggestions made by the squawkers for this point of view is to abandon the natural distinction along racial lines, and to replace it with a highly unnatural one along sexual lines. One such suggestion-emanating, no doubt, from the mind of a madwhite-would have us say “he” for male whites (and blacks) and “she” for female whites (and blacks). Can you imagine the outrage with which sensible folk of either sex would greet this “modest proposal”?

Another suggestion is that the plural pronoun “they” be used in place of the inclusive “whe.” This would turn the charming proverb “Whe who laughs last, laughs best” into the bizarre concoction “They who laughs last, laughs best.” As if anyone in whis right mind could have thought that the original proverb applied only to the white race! No, we don’t need a new pronoun to “liberate” our minds. That’s the lazy white’s way of solving the pseudoproblem of racism. In any case, it’s ungrammatical. The pronoun “they” is a plural pronoun, and it grates on the civilized ear to hear it used to denote only one person. Such a usage, if adopted, would merely promote illiteracy and accelerate the already scandalously rapid nosedive of the average intelligence level in our society.