Gender, pronouns and thought
The ligature between epicene pronouns and a more neutral gender perception
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.v5i1.133Keywords:
Linguistic Relativity, Grammatical Gender, Epicene PronounsAbstract
Previous studies have established that, in languages without epicene pronouns such as English, speakers overwhelmingly construe putatively generic terms such as ‘mankind’ as masculine, and that similar results hold for the construal of referents denoted by supposedly generic uses of masculine pronouns. What has not been addressed in the literature is whether speakers of languages without epicene pronouns exhibit greater androcentrism in the construal of non-gendered stimuli, even without being prompted with gender-biased terms. The results of two cross-linguistic tasks on gender construal are discussed here. Subjects were shown cartoons of non-gendered figures and asked to name the figures after a short linguistically-oriented distracter task. Patterns in the naming task suggest that speakers of English exhibit more androcentrism in their construal of gender-neutral stimuli, when contrasted to speakers of Karitiâna, a language that relies heavily on epicene pronoun usage.
References
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Bodine, ann (1975) androcentrism in prescriptive grammar: singular “they,” sex-indefinite “he,” and “he or she.” Language in Society 4:129–146. doi:10.1017/s0047404500004607
Boroditsky, lera (2001) does language shape thought? english and mandarin speakers’ conceptions of time. Cognitive Psychology 43:1–22. doi:10.1006/cogp.2001.0748
Boroditsky, lera (2003) linguistic relativity. in lynn nadel (ed.) Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science 917–921. london: macmillan.
Evans, Bergen and evans, cornelia (1957) A Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage. new york: random House.
Everett, caleb (2006) patterns in karitiâna: articulation, perception and grammar. phd dissertation, rice university, Houston, texas.
Everett, caleb (2008) aspects of karitiâna vowels. Anthropological Linguistics 50:1–26.
Everett, caleb (2011) variable velic movement in karitiâna. International Journal of American Linguistics 77: 33–58. doi:10.1086/657327
Flaherty, mary (2001) How a language gender system creeps in perception. Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology 32:18–31. doi:10.1177/0022022101032001005
Gordon, peter (2004) numerical cognition without words: evidence from amazonia. Science 306:496–499. doi:10.1126/science.1094492
Harrison, linda (1975) cro-magnon woman-in eclipse. The Science Teacher 42:8–11.
Koerner, konrad (1992) The sapir-whorf hypothesis: a preliminary history and bibliographical essay. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 2:173–198. doi:10.1525/jlin.1992.2.2.173
Konishi, toshi (1993) The semantics of grammatical gender: a cross-cultural study. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 22:519–534. doi:10.1007/BF01068252
Kramarae, cheri (1974) stereotypes of women’s speech: The word from cartoons. Journal of Popular Culture 8:624–630. doi:10.1111/j.0022-3840.1974.0803_624.x
Landin, rachel (1989) kinship and naming among the karitiana of northwestern Brazil. ma thesis, university of texas at arlington.
Levinson, stephen (1997) language and cognition: The cognitive consequences of spatial description in guugu yimithirr. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 7:98–131. doi:10.1525/jlin.1997.7.1.98
Levinson, stephen, meira, sergio and The language and cognition group (2003) ‘natural concepts’ in the spatial topological domain—adpositional meanings in crosslinguistic perspective: an exercise in semantic typology. Language 79: 485–516. doi:10.1353/lan.2003.0174
Levinson, stephen, kita, sotaro, Haun, daniel and rasch, Björn (2002) returning the tables: language affects spatial reasoning. Cognition 84:155–188. doi:10.1016/s0010-0277(02)00045-8
Li, peggy and gleitman, lila (2002) turning the tables: language and spatial reasoning. Cognition 83:265–294. doi:10.1016/s0010-0277(02)00009-4
Lucy, John (1996) The scope of linguistic relativity: an analysis and review of empirical research. in John gumperz and stephen levinson (eds) Rethinking Linguistic Relativity 37–69. cambridge: cambridge university press.
Lucy, John and gaskins, suzanne (2001) grammatical categories and classification preferences. in melissa Bowerman and stephen levinson (eds) Language Acquisition and Conceptual Development 257–283. cambridge: cambridge university press.
Mackay, donald (1980) pscychology, prescriptive grammar, and the pronoun problem. American Psychologist 35:444–449. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.35.5.444
Mills, anne e. (1986) The Acquisition of Gender: A Study of English and German. Berlin: springer.
Murray, lindley (1795) English Grammar. menston: scolar press Facsimile.
Slobin, dan (1996) From ‘thought and language’ to ‘thinking for speaking’. in John gumperz and stephen levinson (eds) Rethinking Linguistic Relativity 70–96. cambridge: cambridge university press.
Tight, daniel (2006) The relationship between perceived gender in l1 english and grammatical gender in l2 spanish. in carol a. klee and timothy l. Face (eds) Selected Proceedings of the 7th Conference on the Acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese as First and Second Languages 149–160. somerville, ma: cascadilla proceedings project.
Vander velden, Felipe Ferreira (2007) circuitos de sangue: corpo, pessoa e sociabilidade entre os karitiana. Habitus 5:275–300.
Vigliocco, gabriella, vinson, david, paganelli, Federica and dworzynski, katharina (2005) grammatical gender effects on cognition: implications for language learning and language use. Journal of Experimental Psychology 134: 501–520.
White, richard grant (1880) Everyday English. Boston: Houghton mifflin.
Whorf, Benjamin l. (1956) Language, Thought and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf, edied by J.B. carrol. cambridge, ma: The mit press.
Wilson, elizabeth and Hung ng, sik (1988) sex bias in visual images evoked by generics: a new Zealand study. Sex Roles 18:159–168. doi:10.1007/BF00287786
Zubin, david and köpcke, michael-klaus (1981) gender: a less than arbitrary grammatical category. in r. a. Hendrick, c. a. masek and m. F. miller (eds) Papers from the Seventeenth Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society 439–49. chicago: chicago linguistic society.
Published
2011-07-20
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Everett, C. (2011). Gender, pronouns and thought: The ligature between epicene pronouns and a more neutral gender perception. Gender and Language, 5(1), 133-152. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.v5i1.133
