Feminist Language Planning Essay

1 Feminism and lyric poemThere is no doubt that feminism has been and continues to be one of the main societal movements of this century. Its all(a)ude is felt in numerous societies around the world and in umpteen spheres of life. The womens or libber movement strives, amongst separate things, for the elimination of sex discrimination and for the greater recognition of womens contributions to society as sound as aims to change many a nonher(prenominal) cultural and social practices which perpetuate aged value systems. Language was and is seen by many feminists as a omnipotent instrument of patriarchy for example, the feminist Dale Spender, spoke of the English talking to as being manmade and as being an important contributor to womens heaviness (Spender 1980). It is therefore non surprising that talking to and discourse practices were and be subjected to feminist scrutiny, often guide to elaborate and detailed descriptions of male chauvinist practices affecting la nguage white plague. 2. Feminism and lingual refineFeminists, at least in western societies, similarly expressed a desire to change the patriarchal and sexist nature of language and therefore engaged in various types of lingual sort out or language readiness. Although many feminists sh ard the belief that changing lingual and discourse practices is an important element in womens bagging, this did not result in a uniform burn up to lingual clear up (see e.g. Pauwels 1998). The social, cultural, political and philosophical diversity which characterizes members of the feminist movement is also reflected in the approaches to and aims for feminist language reform. For example, not all forms of feminism, interpret womens liberation as a question of achieving mere equality of the sexes. Similarly, not all lingual reform proposals relieve oneself as their main aim the exercise of lingual equality of the sexes. Some reform initiatives primarily aim at exposing the sexist na ture of patriarchal language by causing linguistic disruptions.The strategies utilise to secure linguistic disruption frequently involve experimentation and creativity with all disunites of name and address. The word herstory to point to history which is not only about men, is an example of linguistic disruption a morphologic boundary has been reconstituted to + on semantic grounds. Creating a women-centred language capable of expressing domain from a female perspective is another prominent objective of few forms of feminist language planning. Proposed changes range from the creation of new women-centred meanings for dustup handle witch, hag and neologisms much(prenominal) as malestream, femocrat, graphemic innovations including womyn or wimmin and LehrerIn (German), to developing women- instructionsed discourses and plain off creating an entirely new language.An example of the latter is the Ladan language created by the science-fiction writer and linguist, Suzette Had en Elgin for the specific purpose of expressing the perceptions of women (Elgin 19881). Despite this diversity in reform initiatives and objectives for feminist language planning, it is the linguistic equality of the sexes approach which has become identical with feminist language planning in the eyes of the wider community. This is in part due to the prominence of liberal feminist approaches in the public compass which focus on achieving sex/ sexual practice equality. Linguistic discrimination is seen as a form of sex discrimination which can be address in ways similar to other forms of sex discrimination (e.g. in physical exercise). In fact the question of gender bias in occupational words is directly linked to gender discrimination in the employment atomic number 18na. The prominence of the linguistic equality approach is also due to the medias attention to non-sexist language guide pull outs, the main instrument of promoting this type of feminist language reform.Advocates of the linguistic equality approach use of goods and services the strategies of gender-neutralisation (sometimes gender abstraction) and/or gender-specification (feminisation) to expose their goal of creating a language system which allows for a balanced type of the sexes. Gender-neutralisation involves minimising or eliminating gender-specific expressions and constructions. It entails that any morphosyntactic and lexical features score human agent nouns and pronouns (or other parts of speech) as masculine or feminine are neutralised for gender, especially in generic wine wine contexts (Pauwels 1998 109).Examples for English include the elimination of gender-suffixes of -ess, -ette, -(tr)ix in notification to human agent nouns (e.g. hostess, aviatrix, usherette), the creation of heighten nouns involving -person (e.g. chairperson, tradesperson), and the avoidance of generic he. Gender-specification (also known as feminisation) is a strategy employ to achieve linguistic equali ty by making the invisible sex (in considerably-nigh cases, women) visible in language through systematic and symmetrical marking of gender.Although English does not use this strategy much (it is build more than often in languages with grammatical gender), the use of he or she, and of phrases such as police women and men, actors and actresses in generic contexts exemplifies the gender-specification strategy. Underlying the linguistic equality approach to reform is a belief that making changes to linguistic forms will contribute significantly to the promotion of non-sexist meanings. 3 Evaluating feminist linguistic reformIn the previous section I indicated that there are several approaches to feminist language reform and that the linguistic equality approach is the most(prenominal) prominent and possibly, the most widespread one. In this paper my focus is on the evaluation of the linguistic equality approach. Evaluating the outcome (a result or an effect of an action) is a cru cial aspect of any form of language planning. Language planners together with the interest groups, agencies or institutions which encouraged, demanded or sanctioned (allowed) the reforms are usually keen to assess the impact of planning on the linguistic behaviour of the individuals, groups or communities targeted by the reforms. Whereas advocates and/or opponents of linguistic reform are primarily interested in the extent to which the linguistic reform proposals have been adopted or rejected, for language planners the evaluation exercise also provides worth(predicate) information on the process of language planning, the factors which facilitate and/or close down change.A further interest for language planners who are also linguistic scholars is the possibility of comparing the process of the spread of so-called planned vs unwilled linguistic change thus contributing to a better reasonableness of linguistic change. Here I wish to explore two battleground aspects of the evaluat ion of feminist language planning (1) Evidence of the (successful) bankers acceptance of feminist linguistic proposals (2) Insights into the ways feminist language changes spread throughout the community.The espousal and spread of feminist linguistic reform are examined in relation to a prominent feature of feminist linguistic reform of the linguistic equality type the use of gender-neutral and/or gender-inclusive occupational nouns and titles. Data for this watchword come mainly from English, although reference is also made to Dutch, French and German studies. The discussion of linguistic spread is very preliminary as most data have not yet been subjected to a thorough abbreviation i.e. only crusades will be descentd. 4 Adopting feminist linguistic reform success or failure?4.1 Occupational nomenclatureIn many western societies feminist concerns about gender bias in occupational nouns, professional titles and ground attracted attention primarily through its link with hinge upon Discrimination Acts and other legislation aimed at eliminating gender-based discrimination in employment. Feminists and women activists in a range of professional bodies highlighted the fact that occupational and professional nomenclature used in employment-related contexts displayed bias in favour of men leading to womens invisibility in this area of language use. For example, linguistic practices found in many job classifieds assumed applicants to be male. Male-stereotyped language was used to describe applicants (e.g. aggressive, dynamic, virile). The use of masculine generic nouns and pronouns (e.g. the applicant he storeman, tradesman, cameraman he) further reinforced the maleness of the desired applicant.Research in the mid-seventies and 1980s (e.g. Bem & Bem 1973, Hamilton 1988, Kidd 1971, Mackay & Fulkerson 1979, Martyna 1978, Pincus & Pincus 1980, Schneider and Hacker 1973, Wilson & Ng 1988) found evidence that masculine generic nouns and pronouns were seldom inter preted in a generic, gender-neutral sense. Instead they were associated with male-specific images in many language users. Two major strategies emerged to eliminate this gender bias in occupational nomenclature gender-neutralisation and gender-specification (feminisation). Selecting one strategy over another seems partially linked to linguistic typology. Gender-specification as a main strategy is more likely to occur in the case of grammatical gender languages (e.g. German, French, Italian, Spanish) which shut away have productive gender suffixes (e.g. German).Gender-neutralisation is more likely to be use to languages with a natural gender system (e.g. English) or languages in which gender suffixes are less or no longer productive (e.g. Danish, Swedish and Dutch). However, the choice of the main strategy is also influenced by extra-linguistic or social arguments. Gender-neutralisation is clearly aimed at taking gender out of the occupational orbit. In other words, the aim is to ha ve a society in which a persons sex has no relevance or significance for their occupational status. Proponents of the feminisation strategy, on the other hand, argue that it is socially more effective to achieve linguistic equality by viewing that there are an increasing number of women in all areas of the salaried work force, i.e. womens participation in the work force take to be made more visible through the strategy of gender-specification or feminisation.In order to demonstrate successful bridal of feminist linguistic reform in this area of language use, evidence needs to be found that the feminist alternatives are used increasingly in gustatory perception to the gender biased forms and that the actual use of the feminist alternatives is in line with their promoted use. In language planning terms , successful feminist linguistic reform entails evidence that the feminist alternatives move from a status of discouraged or even disapproved use to that of tolerated, and eventua lly preferred or promoted use (Kloss 1968). Findings from Dutch, English, French (see especially Burr in this volume) and German research into the adoption of non-sexist occupational nomenclature confirm that feminist linguistic alternatives are (increasingly) used, although adoption rates vary substantially from language to language and vary accord to linguistic context/genre. For the purposes of this paper I will confine the showing of evidence to that found in relation to the print media (mainly newspapers).English speech communities seem to lead the way in the adoption of feminist linguistic alternatives for occupational terms. Cooper (1984) studied the impact of feminist language planning on the use of masculine generic pronouns and nouns (including occupational nouns) on a corpus of 500000 words taken from American newspapers, current affairs and womens magazines covering the period 1971 1979. He found a dramatic capitulation in the use of masculine generics, especially of generic man and generic he their use fell from 12.3% per 5000 words in 1971 to 4.3% in 1979. In New Zealand Meyerhoff (1984) analyzed changes in the use of masculine generics in a corpus of 150000 words taken from five newspapers with a different earreach (i.e. a national and a regional daily, a learner newspaper, a TV magazine and a womens magazine as well as a monthly publication of the New Zealands journalists union).Her study found evidence of a significant reduction in the use of masculine generic nouns and pronouns with the decrease being most pronounced for the educatee newspaper and the journalists union publication. The only publication to support - person compounds was the student newspaper. Holmes analysis of the occurrence of -person vs -man and -woman compound forms in the Wellington Corpus of indite New Zealand English covering the period 1986 1989 found that most such forms occurred very seldom (1 per 1 million words) with the exception vocalisation and chairpe rson (Holmes in press). The use of these two forms, however, was considerably lower than that of their masculine generic alternatives spokesman and moderate. The corpus revealed 6 instances of chairperson(s) vs 109 for chairman/men and 2 for chairwoman/women. Spokesperson(s) occurred 4 times in the corpus, spokespeople once, spokeswoman/women twice and spokesman/men 36 times.Holmes (in press) did note that the overwhelming majority of the instances of chairman were identifiable as male, a gloomy reflection of the social reality that it was men who held this position most often, even in 1986. She found only 4 instances of chairman being used to refer to a woman. My own study which comprised a corpus of 200000 words taken from two national Australian newspapers in 1992 and in 1996 similarly found an overall low incidence of -person, -man and -woman compound forms. The number of occurrences of chairman/chairwoman/ chairperson revealed the continued predominant use of chairman, altho ugh a breakdown of the numbers according to referents showed that chairman was predominantly used to refer to male referents.The few occurrences of chairperson and chair (see Table 1) do not allow for an interpretation of emerging trends. In the case of chairman I would have to agree with Holmes comment that its continuing, frequent use reflects the fact that out-of-the-way(prenominal) more men than women continue to occupy this position. It should also be state that newspaper articles are not an ideal source to establish generic uses of this term, as most references to this position specify the incumbent.In the case of spokesman/spokeswoman/spokesperson a more substantial change can be detect although 38 instances of spokesman were recorded, spokesperson appeared 32 times. A breakdown in terms of referents showed that 47% of spokesman uses referred to a male and that spokesman was never used to refer specifically to a female. Most uses of spokesperson had no specific referent. The re is also some indication that spokesperson is being used in link with male as well as female referents, hence avoiding the trend that the -person compound is used as a mere substitution for the -woman compound form.