Capturing socially motivated linguistic change: how the use of gender-fair language affects support for social initiatives in Austria and Poland.

Lisa K. Horvath,Magdalena M. Formanowicz,Sabine Sczesny,Aleksandra Cisłak

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01617

Abstract

Gender-fair language consists of the symmetric linguistic treatment of women and men instead of using masculine forms as generics. In this study, we examine how the use of gender-fair language affects readers' support for social initiatives in Poland and Austria. While gender-fair language is relatively novel in Poland, it is well established in Austria. This difference may lead to different perceptions of gender-fair usage in these speech communities. Two studies conducted in Poland investigate whether the evaluation of social initiatives (Study 1: quotas for women on election lists; Study 2: support for women students or students from countries troubled by war) is affected by how female proponents (lawyers, psychologists, sociologists, and academics) are referred to, with masculine forms (traditional) or with feminine forms (modern, gender-fair). Study 3 replicates Study 2 in Austria. Our results indicate that in Poland, gender-fair language has negative connotations and therefore, detrimental effects particularly when used in gender-related contexts. Conversely, in Austria, where gender-fair language has been implemented and used for some time, there are no such negative effects. This pattern of results may inform the discussion about formal policies regulating the use of gender-fair language.

Highlights

We added an interaction term, since the effects of gender-fair language may be affected by this factor (e.g., Braun et al, 2005)
The results indicated that the effects of linguistic form were moderated by participant gender
This indicates that the use of masculine forms in referring to women appears odd when speakers are accustomed to gender-fair language, even if masculine generics were formerly common in the respective country

Summary

INTRODUCTION

These lyrics by Dylan capture a rarely examined phenomenon in social psychology, that is, social reality changes over time and may do so even within a fairly short period. Over time, politically correct language can be reasonably assumed to become a linguistic standard and may trigger positive evaluation among its users We tested this assumption by comparing two speech communities where grammatical gender languages are spoken (Polish in Poland and German in Austria), which substantially differ with respect to gender-fair usage. The principle strategy employed to make a language gender fair is to have feminine forms of human nouns used more frequently and systematically to make female referents visible This means masculine generics, that is, grammatically masculine forms meant to represent both genders (e.g., German Leser, Polish czytelnicy “readers, masc.”) are replaced by feminine–masculine word pairs Forms traditionally mean “wife of ” rather than “female job holder” (e.g., krawcowa “tailor, fem.” or “wife of a tailor”) Considering these differences, we hypothesized that reactions to gender-fair language would differ in Poland and Austria. We conducted three studies (Studies 1 and 2 in Poland and Study 3 in Austria) with a similar design to examine how the use of gender-fair language or masculine forms affected respondents’ support for social initiatives (Studies 1–3) addressing gender-related (Studies 1–3), or non-gender-related topics (Studies 2 and 3)

Methods

Results and Discussion

GENERAL DISCUSSION