I’ve been thinking about this subject quite a bit lately while I’ve been working on refreshing my Spanish skills. In English, it’s really not that hard to make a sentence gender-neutral. But in many other languages, there seems to be (from my perspective, anyway) a lot more emphasis on gendering people/things. I’ve been making it a point in my life lately to avoid making assumptions about a person’s gender, so the very gender-specific nature of Spanish has been bothering me more than it ever did before. I am a total nerd for linguistics (I mean, I did study it for 4 years), so I really want to educate myself on this.
If anybodyhas any resources for information on gender-neutrality in languages other than English, I would really appreciate them.
signal boost!
My first ever sociology paper was titled “Language and Gender Identity: Expressing Diversity in a Binary System.” I found Anna Livia’s (2001) Pronoun Envy: Literary Uses of Linguistic Gender to be pretty interesting. If I remember correctly she does touch on gendered language in French. I wrote this paper over four years ago, and it was not in any way extensive, so I’m sure there’s plenty of other stuff out there. Livia might be a good starting point, though!
