Editorial: Language, Cognition, and Gender.

Abstract

Gender inequality remains a contentious issue in many societies, despite legislative, and other less formal attempts to tackle it. It is perpetuated, in part, by gender stereotyping. Previous research indicates that language contributes to gender inequality in various ways: Gender-related information is transmitted through formal and semantic features of language, such as the grammatical category of gender, through gender-related connotations of role names (e.g., manager, secretary), and through customs of denoting social groups with derogatory as opposed to neutral names. Both as a formal system and as a means of communication, language passively reflects culture-specific social conditions. Furthermore, language can also be used to express actively, and can potentially perpetuate, those conditions. Tackling these issues successfully depends on a proper understanding of their cognitive and societal underpinnings, but also on understanding the effects of attempted interventions. With these points in mind, the editors of this Special Topic, in collaboration with other colleagues, proposed a Marie Curie Initial Training Network entitled Language, Cognition, and Gender (ITN LCG), to address a range of questions about language and gender inequality. This project received funding from the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013). ITN LCG included 10 European universities in the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, together with 12 associate partners in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The research conducted within the ITN was organized into four work packages, addressing the questions of: how languages shape cognitive representations of gender how features of European languages correspond with gender equality in European societies how language contributes to social behavior toward the sexes how gender equality can be promoted through strategies for gender-fair language use. These questions also appeared in the call for papers for this Special Topic, as it was intended that the Special Topic should showcase findings from ITN LCG together with related research. Reflecting ITN LCG's focus on both cognitive and broader language-based and societal issues, the Special Topic has nine papers in Frontiers in Psychology, Cognition, and eight papers in Frontiers in Psychology, Language Sciences. However, it was originally thought that all papers would be referenced in both sections, so that the allocation of a paper to either Cognitive or Language Sciences is of no particular significance. Of the nine papers in the Cognition section, seven report work from ITN LCG and the other two (Garnham and Yakovlev; Garnham et al.) report related work by Garnham and colleagues, which arose out of discussions within ITN LCG, but which was carried out by students at the University of Sussex who were not funded from the ITN LCG grant. Of the eight papers in the Language Sciences section, six report work from ITN LCG. Of the other two, one (Wolter et al.) was carried out in collaboration with members of the ITN LCG, whereas the other (Gustafsson Senden et al.) was an independent study, closely related to the interests of ITN LCG. In keeping with ITN LCG's multidisciplinary approach, the contributors to this Special Topic include both cognitive and social psychologists, and linguists. For the most part the contributions report original research, with a wide range of methods, from surveys to electro-physiological studies. In addition, the Special Topic includes one Review paper (Sczesny et al.) and one Hypothesis and Theory paper (Esaulova and von Stockhausen). Most of the contributions address questions about either the cognitive representation of gender or the use and effects of gender-fair language. They present a range of complementary studies, which make a substantial contribution to the understanding of these important issues.