Professional Titles for Women Seafarers in the Croatian and Montenegrin Media

Milena Dževerdanović Pejović

doi:10.7225/toms.v09.n02.017

Abstract

This paper aims to present a comparative view of the English and Croatian female maritime ranks aboard ship in the language of media. Regarding the English language, male/masculine forms have also been normative and gender-neutral; in other words, they refer to both genders (pilot, lawyer, captain). However, changes in the society and “embarkation” of women on board masculine professions have been reflected in language changes as well. The female professional titles are derived from the masculine forms. Social changes and gender awareness politics simultaneously took place in both countries, resulting in the rise of women seafarer number on board ships. This paper presents a review of the comparative analysis of Montenegrin and Croatian texts. The results show that Croatian media use the female titles more frequently and regularly, while in Montenegrin texts their use is somewhat sporadic. The reasons for this are also found in the ethnical picture of the two countries. Montenegrin society still rests on patriarchal values and the authors of the texts prefer using masculine forms as gender-neutral. What is more, the Republic of Croatia accessed the European Union in 2013, and it was undoubtedly required to implement institutional regulations relating to minimizing gender discrimination in the society and public discourse. Finally, it was concluded that linguists and language planners have to differentiate between justified and non-justified use of female forms as they can assume the pejorative meaning.

Highlights

In modern times, when women have fought for equal status in male-dominated professions, it is necessary to designate the corresponding female titles
Naming female titles has become a current issue of modern linguistics, politics, media, and diplomacy
The examples from the Croatian language were readily accessible for linguistic analysis

Summary

Introduction

In modern times, when women have fought for equal status in male-dominated professions, it is necessary to designate the corresponding female titles. Naming female titles has become a current issue of modern linguistics, politics, media, and diplomacy. The traditional solution that has been applied so far is the use of masculine grammatical gender as an unmarked category, i.e. women were “identified” through men. As far as language regulations are concerned, the usage of masculine forms for men in linguistics was an unmarked choice, a language norm. The use of masculine pronouns to refer to men’s and women’s professions and the use of the “neutral” generic pronouns (“he”) to refer to both men and women, have become implicit and taken for granted in the English language. Linguists have argued since the rise of the feminist movement in the 1970s and 1980s that language has been mainly created for men

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