Linguistic Facts as a Reflection of Changes in Seafaring: Is a ship still a ‘she’?

Abstract

Linguistic facts reflect a lot about the world. There is an inherent linguistic and pragmatic belief that ships are feminine. The fact that the third-person pronoun ‘she’ is used when reference is made to a ship has become an unquestionable language fact in seafaring. Yet changes in the modern world and shipping, which has been determined as being a male-dominated profession, have imposed certain language changes in order to make the language and job of seafaring gender-neutral. This article takes examples from numerous ship-related materials to explore the interrelation between linguistic facts and seafaring.