"Linguistic Gender Trouble. What is it? Why do people have it? Should we care?"

"Social workers cannot be cheap"

Pronouns are a core subsystem of natural language morphology, as well as a site of significant metalinguistic reflection and identity formation. Previous work has shown a commonality between English and Dutch (Germanic) with respect to inflectional economy and T-loss (Aalberse & Stoop 2015). In this study, we demonstrate one more commonality between the pronominal systems of these two languages as they relate to economy. Specifically, we show that pronouns that express respect for nonbinary identity will resist economy, as formal and inflectional complexity (and the effort to produce and maintain this complexity) are key components of the respectful meaning.

In English, Konnelly & Cowper (2020) argue that they is best conceived of as an elsewhere form. Representative data follow.

1. They are coming to the party.
2. My mother_i came to drop off their_i tuna salad.
3. Kyle is watching out for themselves/themself.

(1) is ambiguous on at least three readings: one in which they refers to multiple people, one in which they refers to a person of nonbinary identification, or one in which they refers to anyone of any gender identification. This is shown even more clearly in (2), in which gender-neutral they is anteceding the feminine NP my mother. This means that a form that is intended to respect nonbinary identity is fully homophonous with one that acts as generic elsewhere form that is often deployed as a way to avoid referring to gender at all. We characterize this condition is highly inflectionally economical. We show that for some speakers, there is a desire to anti-syncretize, that is, to reduce the amount of similarity between the nonbinarity-respecting and the elsewhere form. One such technique is shown in (3), in which use an inflectionally costly reflexive. Crucially, themself generates a strong implicature that Kyle uses they pronouns; that is, it is clearly an identity-respecting usage, not a gender-avoiding usage. We show other examples of decreasing economy in this domain, including neopronouns (e.g., sie/hir), which exhibit a variety of formal, inflectional, orthographic complexities that we argue contribute intention and effort to the expression of respect.

In Dutch, the two pronouns that respect nonbinary that are most frequently used are: die (from the common gender demonstrative pronoun) and hen (from the object form of the third person plural). We argue that the differential inflectional economy of the two forms explain their differential uptake. Nonbinary die is perceived as much more natural and less attention-drawing, nonbinary hen is much more salient (Vriesendorp 2024). Crucially, similar to English they, Dutch die is compatible with both male and female referents in its usage as a demonstrative. This means that uses of die will be ambiguous between respecting nonbinary identity vs. referring to a recently mentioned binary referent. Hen is the inflectionally more expensive form. First, it is diachronically associated with a set of features that are commonly exapted to express social meaning (i.e., third person plural). Second, whereas die as a demonstrative is a part of the Dutch grammatical core, hen is further away from the core as a possibly borrowed (from Swedish) or calqued (from English) form plus the form is more associated with a more formal and written register (Bennis & Hinskens 2014: 113, see Hubers et al. 2020 and de Hoop 2020 for a discussion on the reentrance of hen to the spoken and informal domains). The English and Dutch data converge to show that more complex social meanings co-occur with more complex formal, inflectional, orthographic, and diachronic markedness: that is, that social work cannot be cheap.

References

Aalberse, S., & Stoop, W. (2015). The exceptional loss of the pronoun T. Journal of Pragmatics, 88, 190-201.

Bennis, H., & Hinskens, F. (2014). Goed of Fout: Niet-standaard inflectie in het hedendaags Standaardnederlands. Nederlandse Taalkunde, 19(2), 131-184.

DeCock, S., Van Hoof, S., Soens, E., & Verhaegen, H. (2024). The comprehensibility and appreciation of non-binary pronouns in newspaper reporting. The case of hen and die in Dutch. Applied Linguistics, 45(2), 330-347.

de Hoop, H. (2020). Het verlies van een persoonlijk voornaamwoord: Waarom hun straks geen hun meer zeggen. Nederlandse Taalkunde, 25(2-3), 355-362.

Hubers, Ferdy, Thijs Trompenaars, Sebastian Collin, Kees De Schepper, & Helen de Hoop. "Hypercorrection as a by-product of education." Applied Linguistics 41, no. 4 (2020): 552-574.

Konnelly, L. & Cowper, E., (2020) “Gender diversity and morphosyntax: An account of singular they”, Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 5(1): 40. doi: https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.1000

Vriesendorp, H. (2024). Macro, Micro, and Meso Approaches to Generalizing in Queer Linguistics: Investigating Non-Binary Pronouns in Dutch. (pp. 163-172). (University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics; Vol. 30, No. 2). University of Pennsylvania. https://repository.upenn.edu/handle/20.500.14332/60618

"Gender in Language Contact Situations"

This talk investigates the multifaceted role of gender in language contact, analyzing it as a sociodemographic variable, a pragmatic factor, and a structural element within language. Drawing on Labov’s gender differentiation theory - where men are generally associated with the use of non-standard, informal speech and women are more likely to lead in linguistic innovation (Labov, 1990) - the discussion explores how gender shapes linguistic behavior in contact settings. Special attention is given to gendered vocatives and forms of address, examining how these elements not only reflect but actively negotiate social hierarchies in multilingual environments (Mills, 2003; Hellinger & Bussmann, 2001).

The talk further explores the phenomenon of pragmatic transfer, particularly in contexts where typologically distinct languages come into contact. Focusing on the interaction between Bantu and West Germanic languages in Namibia - the analysis illustrates how gendered pragmatics are adapted, preserved, or transformed. This is complemented by data from Suriname, where long-standing contact between African languages, Dutch, and Sranan Tongo provides insight into the gendered dimensions of language maintenance, shift, and emergence in postcolonial, multilingual societies (Migge, 2003; Winford, 2003).

By integrating sociolinguistic theory with empirical case studies, this talk illuminates the complex ways in which gender mediates language contact outcomes. The findings underscore gender’s central role in processes of linguistic change, pragmatic accommodation, and identity negotiation in multilingual settings.

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“Processing grammatical and stereotypical gender in Italian and Italian gender inclusive language: evidence from eye movements in reading”

Gender refers to grammatical gender, a lexical feature of most nouns in gendered languages; semantic gender, a transparent relationship between the gender of the referent and the gender of nouns/pronouns used to refer to them. From a sociolinguistic perspective, gender involves gender bias, i.e., the contribution of gender stereotypes associated with specific words, which is particularly evident in role nouns (e.g., engineer, typically activating a male bias; teacher, typically activating a female bias). All these factors might play a role in the process of grammatical agreement, i.e., the coordinate gender assignment across elements in the sentence in gendered languages. Previous psycholinguistic studies in Italian show that grammatical gender takes precedence over semantic agreement in anaphoric dependencies (Cacciari et al., 1997 & 2011 on epicene words). Other studies also suggest that readers integrate (gender) stereotypes, experiencing a clash when the morphological gender and the stereotypical gender associated with a role noun do not match (Carreiras et al., 1996; Padovani & Cacciari, 203; cf. also Gygax et al., 2008; Garnham et al., 2012).

We contribute to this debate by presenting an eye-tracking in reading study to address the following experimental questions:

(Q1) What are the gender agreement preferences for bigender/gendered nouns in Italian and what is the cost of a subject-verb gender mismatch during online processing?

(Q2) Does stereotypical gender of the noun interfere with subject-verb gender agreement?

These results will serve as a baseline for a follow-up study testing the impact and feasibility of Italian inclusive language in reading.

“Inclusive language meets translation: The challenge of translating Kim de l’Horizon’s Blutbuch”

Languages differ in terms of the challenges raised by gender inclusive strategies. While such strategies in languages like English are largely limited to pronouns, in other languages, for intance German or French, gender is marked on many more elements (cf. Hord, 2016). In German noun forms are targeted as well, leading to the emergence of strategies such as the gender star (e.g. die Student*innen ‘the students’) to create forms for generic reference, as well as to refer to persons not identifying within the traditional binary male-female system.

The use of inclusive language has been investigated for several languages (e.g. Schnitzer, 2021, for German and French; Simon & Vanhal, 2022, for French; Link, 2024, for German). Yet, challenges also raise for the translation of literary texts, a topic that has not received a lot of attention in the literature. The present contribution aims at shedding more light on this issue by the use of inclusive language forms in a recent German novel, Blutbuch, and the translation of these forms in French and Dutch. Blutbuch presents an interesting case study, as it has been written by a Swiss-German author, Kim de l’Horizon, identifying as non-binary, and discusses the family history of a non-binary protagonist.

A qualitative analysis shows that in the German original, the predominant strategies of inclusive language are the gender star for noun forms, and the new indefinite pronoun form mensch as alternative to man. The French translation shows inclusive forms in many more cases, not only via agreement on adjectives and past participles, but also on pronouns. In contrast, the presence of dedicated inclusive forms seems limited in the Dutch translation. With this contrastive approach, comparing two Germanic languages to a Romance one, this contribution sheds more light on differences between languages with respect to the implications of inclusive language use.

Selected references:

Hord, Levi C.R. 2016. Bucking the linguistic binary: Gender neutral language in English, Swedish, French, and German. Western papers in linguistics / Cahiers linguistiques de Western 3 (1), article 4.

Link, Sabrina. 2024. The use of gender-fair language in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland: A contrastive, corpus-based study. Lingua 308, 103787.

Schnitzer, Nathalie. 2021. Le langage inclusive en français et en allemande : une tempête dans un verre d’eau ? ICLEA 42.

Simon, Anne Catherine & Clémence Vanhal. 2022. Renforcement de la féminisation et écriture inclusive : étude sur un corpus de presse et de textes politiques. Langue française 215 (3), 81-102.

“Gender-neutral language in times of resistance”

This talk aims to reflect on gender-neutral language (GNL) from a sociolinguistics perspective. To do so, I will contextualise my account by drawing on several empirical case studies on different aspects of gender-neutral language (GNL) in Southern Europe while situating the analysis within the current political and ideological landscape internationally. These studies explore both the dynamics resulting from the institutionalisation of GNL (Erdocia, 2022a) and the political and epistemological strategies used to resist inclusive linguistic forms (Erdocia, 2022b; Erdocia & Soler, 2024). Using a theoretical lens that frames vulnerability from an agentive perspective (Butler, 2016), I will examine GNL as an emancipatory act of resistance deriving from language-related vulnerability (Erdocia, forthcoming) while considering ongoing debates in social sciences around the agency-structure binary. I will then move on to analyse sociolinguistic scholarship on fluid conceptualisations of language and linguistic practices, particularly the notion of linguistic citizenship (Lim, Stroud, & Wee, 2018). This will allow me to explore (1) potential parallels between this framework and GNL and (2) its implications for GNL in the contexts of language policy and linguistic rights. Finally, considering the growing backlash against institutional initiatives promoting equity, diversity and inclusion, I will conclude by exploring the prospects of GNL, both institutionally and in broader societal contexts.

References

Butler, J. (2016). Rethinking vulnerability and resistance. In J. Butler, Z. Gambetti & L. Sabsay (Eds.), Vulnerability in resistance (pp. 12–27). Durham: Duke University Press.

Erdocia, I. (2022a). Participation and deliberation in language policy: the case of gender-neutral language. Current Issues in Language Planning, 23(4), 435-455.

Erdocia, I. (2022b). Language and culture wars: The far right’s struggle against gender-neutral language. Journal of Language and Politics, 21(6), 847-866.

Erdocia, I., & Soler, J. (2024). In pursuit of epistemic authority in public intellectual engagement: the case of language and gender. Multilingua, 43(1), 1-28.

Lim, L., Stroud, C., & Wee, L. (Eds.). (2018). The multilingual citizen: Towards a politics of language for agency and change. Multilingual Matters.

“The Preferred Pronouns of the Ladybug and the Lionfish: Examining Gender Assignment in Translated Children's Literature”

This presentation investigates the linguistic factors that drive translators' gendering decisions when rendering gender-neutral characters into languages that require explicit gender marking. We examine a corpus of children's books translated from languages with common options for expressing gender neutrality, namely Swedish and Hungarian, into languages which often force gender specification through their grammatical systems, namely Dutch, German, and to a lesser degree English.

Our research focuses on animal characters and other animate beings, such as monsters and trolls that lack inherent gender in the source texts but acquire gender through translation. We analyze when and how translators assign gender to previously neutral entities, exploring whether these choices follow predictable patterns based on linguistic constraints, character type, or broader sociocultural factors (as for instance explored by Stephens, 2006 and Geybels, 2023).

Consider the following example from Erika Bartos's "The Hot Air Balloon" from 2010:

1)           [Babóca  segített Gömbinek felmászni a csúszdára,]                     (Hungarian original)

[Babóca helped  Gömbi climb the slide]                             (lit. translation)

és   el   is kapta  őt           a    csúszda alján.                                      

and too caught   him/her the slide       bottom.at.

‘Dolly helped Bubble up the slide and caught him at the bottom.’  (English translation)

In the Hungarian source text, Gömbi (a baby beetle) has no specified gender, but the English translation assigns masculine gender to Gömbi/Bubble through the pronouns him/his.This transformation occurs despite potential alternatives, such as avoiding pronouns, which suggests that translators' choices extend beyond grammatical necessity to include implicit assumptions about character traits and roles (see also Čermáková & Mahlberg, 2021).

Our findings confirm that linguistic choices in children's literature both reflect and potentially reinforce cultural gender norms (Hunt, 2006; Lewis et al., 2022). The impact of this practice is significant given the formative role these texts play in children's understanding of social categories (Peterson & Lach, 1990).

References

Čermáková, A., & Mahlberg, M. (2021). Gender inequality and female body language in children's literature. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Volume 36, Issue Supplement 2, October 2021, Pages ii72–ii77

Geybels, L. (2023). Shuffling Softly, Sighing Deeply: A Digital Inquiry into Representations of Older Men and Women in Literature for Different Ages. Social Sciences, 12(3), 112.

Hunt, P. (Ed.). (2006). Understanding children's literature. London: Routledge.

Lewis, M., Cooper Borkenhagen, M., Converse, E., Lupyan, G., & Seidenberg, M. S. (2022). What might books be teaching young children about gender?. Psychological science, 33(1), 33-47.

Peterson, S. B., & Lach, M. A. (1990). Gender stereotypes in children's books: Their prevalence and influence on cognitive and affective development. Gender and education, 2(2), 185-197.

Stephens, J. (2006). Analysing texts: stylistics and linguistics. In Hunt, P. (Ed.). Understanding children's literature. London: Routledge.