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Abstract
This paper examines grammatical gender from the sociolinguistic perspective. The question pursued is to what extent exponents of grammatical gender are tied indexically to identity categories. Building on literature and corpus data, I claim that within the Norwegian context, grammatical gender is associated with sociolinguistic dimensions such as the urban/rural distinction, political views, class, ethnicity. The traditional three-gender system is being replaced by a two-gender system in several dialects, resulting in the loss of the feminine gender. Indexical values associated with the feminine gender features are still valid, though, and some forms take on new pragmatic functions. Once grammatical gender is viewed through a sociolinguistic lens, with the agency of speakers being recognized, it becomes clear that it may not be fully understood without taking into account the context of interaction at a micro-level, and the sociohistorical characteristics of—for instance—regions with language contact at a macro-level.*
Highlights
The traditional three-gender system is being replaced by a two-gender system in many Norwegian dialects
Corpus data retrieved from the UPUS project (Utviklingsprosesser i urbane språkmiljø [Linguistic Developments in Urban Spaces]; see, among others, Svendsen & Røyneland 2008, Hårstad & Opsahl 2013) show how young speakers in multicultural neighborhoods in Oslo use grammatical gender as one of several linguistic resources in their negotiation of identities or personae typically associated with a multiethnolectal speech style
Hinskens (2014:136) distinguishes another type of hyperdialectism, when L2 speakers unintentionally overgeneralize morphologically conditioned or lexicalized rules. Both types of hyperdialectism seem applicable to the situation within the Norwegian gender system as presented above: The first type of hyperdialectism emerges when the speaker makes a deliberate choice to adhere to a two-gender system to distance himself or herself from the radical, rural, local or some other indexical meaning associated with the feminine gender
Summary
This paper examines grammatical gender from the sociolinguistic perspective. The question pursued is to what extent exponents of grammatical gender are tied indexically to identity categories. Building on literature and corpus data, I claim that within the Norwegian context, grammatical gender is associated with sociolinguistic dimensions such as the urban/rural distinction, political views, class, ethnicity. Indexical values associated with the feminine gender features are still valid, though, and some forms take on new pragmatic functions. Once grammatical gender is viewed through a sociolinguistic lens, with the agency of speakers being recognized, it becomes clear that it may not be fully understood without taking into account the context of interaction at a micro-level, and the sociohistorical characteristics of— for instance—regions with language contact at a macro-level.*
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