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Representation of the sexes in language

Authors:
Dagmar Stahlberg at Universität Mannheim
Dagmar Stahlberg
F. Braun
F. Braun
F. Braun
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L. Irmen
L. Irmen
L. Irmen
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Sabine Sczesny at Universität Bern
Sabine Sczesny
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Literaturangabe:
Stahlberg, D., Braun, F., Irmen, L., & Sczesny, S. (2007). Representation of
the sexes in language. In K. Fiedler (Ed.), Social communication. A volume
in the series Frontiers of Social Psychology (pp. 163-187). (Series Editors:
A. W. Kruglanski & J. P. Forgas). New York: Psychology Press.
... mother/father) or professions (e.g. chairman/chairwoman) (Corbett, 1991;Stahlberg et al., 2007;McConnell-Ginet, 2013). To achieve gender-fair English, singular they and genderneutral nouns, e.g. ...
... chairperson, are often used to address non-binary people (APA Style, 2019). Other languages, such as German and Italian, are grammatical gender languages and require extensive gender marking in pronouns, nouns and also in adjectives or participles (Corbett, 1991;Stahlberg et al., 2007). ...
Gender-Fair Post-Editing: A Case Study Beyond the Binary
Conference Paper
Full-text available
  • Jun 2023
Machine Translation (MT) models are well-known to suffer from gender bias, especially for gender beyond a binary conception. Due to the multiplicity of language-specific strategies for gender representation beyond the binary, debiasing MT is extremely challenging. As an alternative, we propose a case study on gender-fair post-editing. In this study, six professional translators each post-edited three English to German machine translations. For each translation, participants were instructed to use a different gender-fair language approach, that is, gender-neutral rewording, gender-inclusive characters, and a neosystem. The focus of this study is not on translation quality but rather on the ease of integrating gender-fair language into the post-editing process. Findings from non-participant observation and interviews show clear differences in temporal and cognitive effort between participants and GFL approach as well as in the success of using gender-fair language.
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... However, regardless of the intended generic referential denotation of the masculine form, a considerable body of evidence suggests that use of these forms may well have sexist effects, given that masculine forms lead people to visualize men and to disregard other genders even if they are intended generically (Braun et al., 1998;Braun et al., 2005;Ng, 2007;Sczesny et al., 2016;Stahlberg et al., 2007). Indeed, this effect seems to be rather robust, given that it has been demonstrated for various languages (e.g., English and Swedish, Lindqvist et al., 2018, Norwegian, Gabriel & Gygax, 2008, Russian, Garnham & Yakovlev, 2015, French, Gygax et al., 2021, and Spanish, Anaya-Ramírez et al., 2022. ...
A star is born? The German gender star and its effects on mental representation
Article
Full-text available
Although generic masculine forms supposedly include everyone, they seem to evoke masculine representations to the exclusion of other genders (Stahlberg & Sczesny, 2001). Gender-inclusive alternatives may yield more inclusive representations, but this has not been investigated extensively. The current study focused on German and contrasts generic masculine forms (Politiker, politicians) with the gender star (Politiker*innen, politicians [m/f/d]) in order to assess whether they differ in the mental availability of nonmasculine exemplars. The findings suggest that linguistic form matters, as more female exemplars were listed when participants were exposed to the gender star, although very few other nonmasculine exemplars were mentioned. Furthermore, female participants listed more nonmasculine exemplars than male participants, but, as the sample was skewed (more female than male participants), this result is tentative. Thus, the gender star leads to more inclusive mental representations, but other factors likely also play a role in determining the prominence of nonmasculine exemplars.
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... Countries with gendered languages (e.g., Italian),or with languages combining natural and grammatical gender (e.g., perhaps surprisingly, Dutch) exhibit lower levels of gender equality than countries with natural gender languages (e.g., English) or genderless languages (e.g., Estonian; Prewitt-Freilino et al., 2012; see also . Indeed, according to Ansara and Hegarty (2014), most gendered languages imply binary distinctions or implicitly convey forms of androcentric thinking (Bailey et al., 2019;Bem, 1993)for instance, through the use of masculine generics (Misersky et al., 2019;Stahlberg et al., 2007). This has been recently challenged in some countries by the introduction of linguistic strategies such as the promotion of inclusive language. ...
Gender is conceptualized in different ways across cultures
Article
Full-text available
  • Sep 2023
Gender can be considered an embodied social concept encompassing biological and cultural components. In this study, we explored whether the concept of gender varies as a function of different cultural and linguistic norms by comparing communities that vary in their social treatment of gender-related issues and linguistic encoding of gender. In Study 1, Italian, Dutch, and English-speaking participants completed a free-listing task, which showed Italians and Dutch were the most distinct in their conceptualization of gender: Italian participants focused more on socio-cultural features (e.g., discrimination , politics , and power ), whereas Dutch participants focused more on the corporeal sphere (e.g., hormones , breasts , and genitals ). Study 2 replicated this finding focusing on Italian and Dutch and using a typicality rating task: socio-cultural and abstract features were considered as more typical of “gender” by Italian than Dutch participants. Study 3 addressed Italian and Dutch participants’ explicit beliefs about gender with a questionnaire measuring essentialism and constructivism, and consolidated results from Studies 1 and 2 showing that Dutch participants endorsed more essentialist beliefs about gender than Italian participants. Consistent with socio-cultural constructivist accounts, our results provide evidence that gender is conceptualized differently by diverse groups and is adapted to specific cultural and linguistic environments.
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... This can lead to a range of negative consequences, including discrimination and the perpetuation of gender inequality. Stahlberg et al. (2007) found that masculine generics elicit a male bias in mental images and cause listeners and readers to consider male exemplars of an individual categorization more often than male exemplars. Women are not given authority because they appear incapable of upholding it "… as demonstrated by their linguistic behavior…" (Lakoff, 1973). ...
Message patterns of online gender-based humor, discriminatory practices, biases, stereotyping, and disempowering tools through discourse analysis
Article
Full-text available
  • Jul 2023
This study explored the message patterns of gender-based humor in social media in different layers of discriminatory practices against certain genders, language biases against women and LGBT including elements of stereotyping and disempowering tools against the personal images of subordinate genders. This research used discourse analysis based on the mapped-out online posts and comments of the fourteen (14) profiles of individuals and extracted their important testimonies based on the collected online gender-based humor to elicit the message patterns. Gender-based humor online enhanced the language use in creating messages that express biases towards women and the LGBT. Humor has both implicit and explicit messages that stereotype women and LGBT as weak and slow. These senses of humor also disempower the women and LGBT’s personal images as groups who are easily dominated or are cowards. As asserted, gender-based humor posed a threat to community as it highlights hierarchy-enhancing social roles. Gender-based humor in social media appeared as a mainstreamed form of social differentiation.
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... Ample research using different experimental methodologies has confirmed the influence of linguistic forms on the access to mental representations of men and women (CEP-PIE, 2017;Stahlberg et al., 2007). Sczesny et al. (2016) conducted a bibliographic review and highlighted the importance of implementing GFL in daily language and using it actively. ...
Exploring the use of gender-fair language by influencers
Article
  • Jul 2023
Purpose Explore the use of Gender-Fair Language (GFL) by influencers on Instagram. Design/methodology/approach The clustering methodology. A digital Bag-of-Words (BoW) Method called GFL Clustering BoW Methodology to identify whether an inclusive marketing (IM) strategy can be used. Thus, this research has a methodological and practical contribution to increasing the number of marketing technology tools. Findings This study is original as it proposes an inclusive digital marketing strategy and contributes with methods associated with digital transfers in order to improve marketing strategies, tactics and operations for inclusive content with a data integrity approach. Research limitations/implications Due to the limitations of the application programming interface (API) of the social network Instagram, a limited number of text data were used, which allowed for retrieving the last 12 publications of each studied profile. In addition, it should be considered that this study only includes the Spanish language and is applied to a sample of influencers from Chile. Practical implications The practical contribution of this study will lead to a key finding for the definition of communication strategies in both public and private organizations. Originality/value The originality of this work lies in its attractive implications for nonprofit and for-profit organizations, government bodies and private enterprises in the measurement of the success of campaigns with an IM communicational strategy and to incorporate inclusive and non-sexist content for their consumers so as to contribute to society.
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... Structurally, natural languages have been categorized into grammatical gender, notional gender, and genderless languages (Stahlberg et al., 2007;Savoldi et al., 2021). In grammatical gender languages, nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and determiners are gender-inflected. ...
Participatory Research as a Path to Community-Informed, Gender-Fair Machine Translation
Preprint
  • Jun 2023
Recent years have seen a strongly increased visibility of non-binary people in public discourse. Accordingly, considerations of gender-fair language go beyond a binary conception of male/female. However, language technology, especially machine translation (MT), still suffers from binary gender bias. Proposing a solution for gender-fair MT beyond the binary from a purely technological perspective might fall short to accommodate different target user groups and in the worst case might lead to misgendering. To address this challenge, we propose a method and case study building on participatory action research to include experiential experts, i.e., queer and non-binary people, translators, and MT experts, in the MT design process. The case study focuses on German, where central findings are the importance of context dependency to avoid identity invalidation and a desire for customizable MT solutions.
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... Gender is realised differently in natural languages, which can be classified into (i) grammatical gender, (ii) notional gender, and (iii) genderless languages (Stahlberg et al., 2007;McConnell-Ginet, 2013). In (i), such as German and Italian, each noun has a gender (Corbett, 1991) and extensive gender marking is required. ...
Gender-Fair Language in Translation: A Case Study
Conference Paper
  • Jun 2023
With an increasing visibility of non-binary individuals, a growing number of language-specific strategies to linguistically include all genders or neutralize any gender references can be observed. Due to this multiplicity of proposed strategies and gender-specific grammatical differences across languages, selecting the one option to translate gender-fair language is challenging for machines and humans alike. As a first step towards gender-fair translation, we conducted a survey with translators to compare four gender-fair translations from a notional gender language, English, to a grammatical gender language, German. Proposed translations were rated by means of best-worst scaling as well as regarding their readabil-ity and comprehensibility. Participants expressed a clear preference for strategies with gender-inclusive character, i.e., colon.
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... Structurally, natural languages have been categorized into grammatical gender, notional gender, and genderless languages (Stahlberg et al., 2007;Savoldi et al., 2021). In grammatical gender languages, nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and determiners are gender-inflected. ...
Participatory Research as a Path to Community-Informed, Gender-Fair Machine Translation
Conference Paper
  • Jun 2023
Recent years have seen a strongly increased visibility of non-binary people in public discourse. Accordingly, considerations of gender-fair language go beyond a binary conception of male/female. However , language technology, especially machine translation (MT), still suffers from binary gender bias. Proposing a solution for gender-fair MT beyond the binary from a purely technological perspective might fall short to accommodate different target user groups and in the worst case might lead to misgendering. To address this challenge , we propose a method and case study building on participatory action research to include experiential experts, i.e., queer and non-binary people, translators, and MT experts , in the MT design process. The case study focuses on German, where central findings are the importance of context dependency to avoid identity invalidation and a desire for customizable MT solutions.
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Сборник Язык, культура, ментальность-2019
Conference Paper
  • Apr 2018
To clarify the concept of an integrative model of teaching Russian as a foreign language.
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Gender Bias in English: In Search of Fair Language
Article
Women's historical lack of prominence in Western culture has been the subject of much research and debate in recent years. One area of partiuclar concern has been language: the grammatical prescription of masculine words as generic to describe both men and women. In the service of equality between the sexes, it is crucial to demonstrate that “generic” masculine words are indeed interpreted as generic (equally inclusive of women and men) by language users. The research reported here manipulated gender neutrality of language descriptors to determine whether generic masculine nouns, pronouns, and possessive pronominal adjectives function more similarly to gender specific terms or neuter terms. The relative masculinity of responses to these terms was assessed within three different tasks (draw a picture, read an essay, and provide example names). In addition, the relative masculinity/femininity of 10 terms with various intended gender references was empirically assessed. Participants rated each of them using 14 adjectives taken from the Bern Sex Role Inventory. Results support and extend previous research by showing (1) that “generic” masculine nouns, pronouns, and adjectives function similarly to gender specific masculine terms and (2) that certain grammatically “neutral” terms are in fact rated as relatively masculine. This evidence demonstrates that the use of “generic” masculine and even other grammatically neutral terms in effect serves to exclude women from the English language. The resulting masculine bias in our language reflects and reinforces the pattern of male dominance in society.
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