Gender Bias In Language Research Articles

Exploring the Relationship Between Linguistics Gender and Social Gender

The diversity of social gender has been growing recently, and gender is the hot social issue that has the public concerned. Language is a communication tool people use every day, and meanwhile, which also subtly influences a persons mind. This paper discusses social gender issues from a linguistic point of view, trying to figure out if there are any relations between them. People use language to express their thoughts about social and gender issues, so it is important to explore the relationship. To explore the relationship, this paper discusses gender bias in language, the possible reason for this phenomenon, and the effect of linguistic gender binary on non-binary gender. There are lots of papers which discuss these related issues that have greatly inspired and provided strong help to the author. There are some findings from the study: 1) Gender bias is more serious in grammatical gender languages; 2) Linguistic gender subtly influences peoples minds by shaping their hobbits and making their cognitive world in a more gender-related way. 3) The linguistic gender binary causes problems for transgender people. It has been discovered that linguistic gender has an adverse effect on social gender equality. This paper may help improve the gender equality situation in society and transgender people's self-expression problems. This paper also provides a way to think about grammatical gender in languages.

Gender bias in the Chinese epicene pronoun ta

Unlike all the failed attempts proposed to mitigate gender bias in English, the Chinese language—which has an epicene pronoun, ta—took an opposite path: changes were implemented to make the third person pronoun gender specific by inserting a feminine third person pronoun and a non-human third person pronoun in its writing system (which did not affect speech). As a result, written Chinese became a mirror image of English (having the equivalents of he, she, and it). In this empirical study on gender bias in the Chinese language, we find that this institutional effort has also failed despite a century's implementation in the educational system of the country: the language exhibits a dominating male-as-norm bias as well as bias based on stereotyping, regardless of participants' gender and age groups. Our study therefore contributes to the understanding of language change as well as gender bias in language.

A Feminist Stylistic Analysis of Anti-feminist Poetry in English and Arabic

Language plays a major role in all aspects of life. Communication is regarded as the most important of these aspects, as language is used on a daily basis by humanity either in written or spoken forms. Language is also regarded as the main factor of exchanging peoples’ cultures and traditions and in handing down these attributes from generation to generation. Thus, language is a fundamental element in identifying peoples’ ideologies and traditions in the past and the present. Despite these facts, the feminist linguists have objections to some of the language structures, demonstrating that language is gender biased to men. That is, language promotes patriarchal values. This pushed towards developing extensive studies to substantiate sexism in language. The main question is: is language really sexist? This study employs a feminist stylistic analysis to investigate these theories, and takes the anti-feminist poetry as a springboard for that, for it addresses multiple issues objected to by feminism. The model adopted in this study is Sara Mills’s (1995) Feminist Stylistics which analyzes different structures of language that oppose feminism; English and Arab modern anti-feminist poetry is the genre that is investigated in this study. Besides, this study aims at revealing the societies’ inherent views about women along with investigating the feminist essential claim; that language is sexist. This is done by conducting both qualitative and quantitative analyses on the data. The current study has concluded that language in its pure form is not sexist; rather sexism is a personal and well as a societal attitude. Furthermore, there are certain items, especially in English, that can be regarded since English does not have a feminine form on its own; still, such items can always be avoided and other neutral items can be used instead. Finally, this study recommends that a feminist practical approach is required to track and omit gender bias in language from school books as it has a major effect on the ideology of society. It also recommends to developing a feminist method to raise the awareness against the indirect forms of sexism that plague literature.

Subtle Linguistic Cues Affecting Gender In(Equality)

Gender stereotypes and related gender discrimination are encoded in and transmitted through language, contributing to gender inequality. In this article, we review research findings on subtle linguistic means of communicating gender stereotypes and gender hierarchies. Our goal is to provide a comprehensive repository of various instances of subtle linguistic biases potentially useful in creating a text analysis toolbox to quantify gender bias in language. Our focus is predominantly on those areas that have received less attention both in research and in policy making. As gender inequalities are communicated through linguistic practices, attempts to change social reality include changes in language. Therefore, we suggest possible interventions for practices of gender equality in language.

Gender and Language Bias in English: Phonemes

After reviewing the concept with Derrida, Saussure, and Freud, I review a possible need for a closer focus on meaning at the phoneme level in English as we consider it in relation to gender bias in language.

IX. From Sex to Gender and Back Again: Co-optation of a Feminist Language Reform

Rhoda Unger has made many important contributions to feminist psychology, but perhaps none was as daring in its time as her 1979 proposal that psychology change its way of talking about males and females, women and men, and the processes that created sex differences. She argued that the term ‘sex’ was being used too inclusively. Sex could refer to chromosomes, reproductive organs, intrapsychic characteristics that were thought to belong to men and women, or even the socially appropriate or expected behaviors of people that related to their biological sex classification. The many uses of the term led to confusion in interpreting and understanding differences that may have been present, and in overemphasizing differences at the expense of similarities. In her paper, Rhoda argued that the term ‘sex’ should be reserved for research that examines the biological and physiological aspects of maleness and femaleness, whereas the term ‘gender’ is appropriate for research that examines the nonphysiological aspects of sex that are culturally and socially determined. She astutely pointed out that researchers at that time had not successfully unconfounded sex and gender because they assumed that maleness and masculinity and femaleness and femininity were invariably closely related. She argued that using the term gender ‘makes it less likely that psychological differences between males and females will be considered explicable mainly in terms of physiological differences between them’ (p. 1093). One way of understanding the importance of the sex/gender distinction that Rhoda urged psychology to adopt is to view it as an example of feminist language reform (Pauwels, 1998). Feminist language reform originated in the 1970s as a reaction to the perceived prevalence of sexism and gender bias in language. Feminist reformers argued that women were omitted (e.g. by use of the generic

Mapping trajectories of change – women’s and men’s practices and experiences of feminist linguistic reform in Australia

In this paper we address the issue of the evaluation of feminist language planning in Australia. Through case studies of some self-identified linguistic reformers and non-sexist language users we present a ‘trajectory’ framework for the exploration of evaluation as part of the language planning cycle. We map the users’ trajectories of change through documenting their ‘first contact’ with gender bias in language (an initiating trajectory), their responses, practices and actions in relation to this (a trajectory of practice) and their perceived roles in bringing about, facilitating and spreading change (a trajectory of agency). This documentation reveals narratives of resistance and empowerment through engagement with change in the context of dominant discourses but sometimes also of powerlessness and oppression through rejection and opposition. The outcomes of this analysis suggest multiple and complex interpretations and iterations of feminist linguistic reform evidenced through the mapping of trajectories.

Attitudes about gender bias in language: A reevaluation

Past research findings identified the gender-biased nature of language and the need to incorporate linguistic changes to alleviate this problem. One suggested change was the adoption of a generic pronoun. Given that most research in this area was conducted 10–15 years ago, it is important to determine present opinion on language and language change. In the present study, male and female respondents from five samples completed a questionnaire regarding gender bias in language. National Organization of Women (NOW) members and psychology students indicated more interest in and had made more of an effort to change their language, and would be more likely to adopt a new gender-neutral pronoun than faculty, or medical or English students. Student groups were motivated more by authorities requiring nonbiased language and others' use of a new pronoun than faculty or NOW members, and the media was an important influence for all groups.