Generic masculine

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Generic masculine denotes a usage habit in which grammatically masculine personal or occupational designations , which also have a feminine word form, are used in a generalizing, generic sense for people whose gender ( linguistically: sexus ) is unknown or of no importance. One such generic usage, intended to refer to both male and non-male persons, also applies to some pronouns . The generic masculine is thus the "ability of masculine personal names to be used in a gender-abstracting manner, especially when it is not about specific people". From a generic masculine speaking Linguistics (Linguistics) even if names of male speakers are used to refer to a public or mixed-sex groups or speakers whose gender ( sex ) is unknown or indifferent. In summary, the generic masculine is the "use of the masculine gender to mention mixed-sex groups". The generic masculine is also used gender-neutral in some animal species. In contrast to the "simple" masculine, which almost always denotes male individuals, the generic masculine abstracts from gender, for example:

  • any , of the wants to help is welcome (each and every)
  • all teachers want to teach good lessons - both male (teachers) and female (female teachers)
  • many bears live in the mountains - both male (bears) and female (bears)

Depending on the language, there is a generic use of the masculine in addition to nouns for other parts of speech such as anaphoric personal pronouns , indefinite pronouns and demonstrative pronouns . In principle, feminine and neuter can also be used generically, but this is extremely rare.

In the German language , the use of the generic masculine, especially for job titles and nomina agentis, has lost its widespread use since the 1980s. The background is a criticism, formulated primarily by feminist linguistics , of its misunderstanding and the possibility that only the masculine forms of paired designations become visible when it is used, which means that female speakers are "not taken into account" and thus systematically faded out. Opponents of this criticism see the "not being considered" of women anchored in deeper cognitive layers than in grammar, which can be seen in cultures whose language does not know a generic masculine and yet socially disadvantaged women. The Austrian Indo-Germanist Ivo Hajnal believes the disappearance of the generic masculine is conceivable, but sees the driving force behind this not in gender politics, but in factors relating to the history of language.

History of the term

In the English-speaking world: applied to anaphoric pronouns

In English, the term generic masculine appeared early on as an ad hoc term . However, a cultural debate only broke out around 1974, during the second wave of the women's movement . The use of masculine pronouns for people of indeterminate gender ( when a child plays with his friends ) has been seen as problematic in English since then. In the English-speaking discourse , however, the generic term generic masculine is only rarely used today; rather, there is specific mention of the generic he (also: epicene he ).

In languages ​​like German, the problem of generic masculine pronouns hardly plays a role, because the choice of pronouns here is not determined by the natural gender of the person being referred to, as in English, but by the gender of the noun . In English the noun has no gender (or is not visible) and functions as a mere antecedent , to which the pronouns are only congruent in the number :

  • English
    • natural gender: male - There is my best student . I can't praise him enough. - The cute little tot is our grandchild. He doesn't talk yet.
    • natural gender: female - There is my best student . I can't praise her enough . - A girl lives next door. I see her often.
    • no natural gender - There is my car . I drive it every day. - The cake is good. I like it .
  • German
    • grammatical gender: masculine - there is my best student . I can not praise him enough. - The cake is good. I like him .
    • Grammatical gender: Feminine - This is my best student . I can not praise them enough. - This company is great. I like it .
    • Grammatical gender: neuter - there is my car . I drive it every day. - A girl lives next door . I see it a lot. - The cute guy is our grandchild. It doesn't speak yet.

In the case of anaphors, however, gender congruence was not compulsory even in German well into the 20th century: "If you don't feel what a respectable girl must feel when you woo her , you don't deserve to keep her ." ( Goethe , Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre , Chapter 9).

In the German-speaking area: applied to nouns

In the sociolinguistic discourse of German, a loan translation “generic masculine” can only be proven in the 1980s. In contrast to English, where it is almost exclusively about pronouns , the term in German has since almost exclusively been used to describe ambiguities in nouns. The first investigation into the question of how language users understand grammatically masculine person names was carried out by Josef Klein in 1988 . In the 1990s, gender-sex discrepancies often only attracted attention when they led to confusion about the rules of congruence (“the sprint star and her friends”).

However, the term was already firmly established in feminist discourse in the mid-1990s. 1980 - the same year in which the German translation of Gerd Brantenberg's feminist and language-sensitive novel Die Töchter Egalias came out - was the first time not only for linguistic experts with Luise F. Pusch and Senta Trömel-Plötz's themed volume "Language, Gender and Power" specific work appeared in which the generic masculine was problematized from a feminist point of view.

Occurrence

Nouns

Nouns with feminine derivation

Names of persons and animals are either sexually indifferent or they imply a sexual meaning. In Duden grammar, a distinction is made between three classes of German nouns - especially personal names:

  1. Nouns which, regardless of their grammatical gender, can refer to persons of both natural sexes (man, person, individual) .
  2. Nouns that refer either only to men or only to women (the servant, the mother) . The gender of these words usually corresponds to the natural gender of the person being referred to, but deviates from them in most of the diminutive forms and in some other individual exceptional cases (the girl, the woman) .
  3. Nouns in which, in addition to the masculine basic form, there is a feminine derivation obtained by movement (der Doktor, der Ärztin) . Movement exists in many other languages ​​too; In addition to Low German and modern Hebrew, there are only a few languages ​​in the world that produce large numbers of female derivatives (see also feminine education for animal names ).
Disambiguation of noun masculine third grade

In the case of nouns in this third class, the derivation always refers to the female sex, while the sex meaning of the basic form depends on the context . The common (non-generic) masculine in the German nouns in the singular can be identified by the fact that it is not a random representative of the designated class but a specific individual; in both numbers (singular + plural) it can be recognized by contextual references. In all other cases, a generic masculine is used.

With the help of these two criteria - a. Determination of the designated person or the designated animal, b. Context - in cases of doubt, a disambiguation can be made:

Sexual disambiguation of the names of persons and animals in German
Sexus male Sexus indefinite
(generic masculine) 		Sexus feminine
Singular The basic form denotes a male person or a male animal if a. either a specific individual is meant and / or b. the context indicates that a male person or a male animal is meant. If both conditions on the left are missing, the basic form does not indicate a specific gender. The derived form with a female suffix always denotes a female person or a female animal.

certainly:

  • The novel tells the story of a Russian doctor.
  • Paul is a good doctor. (male first name)
  • Akela the wolf was already old and weak. (individual wolf)

certainly:

  • Dorothea Erxleben was Germany's first female doctor with a doctorate.
  • The she-wolf Rakscha raised Mowgli together with her own litter.

indefinite:

  • A doctor is needed for the medical team. (Comparison of doctor / doctor )
  • Almost every male doctor has a helper who testifies for him in the event of a defamation. (Adjective male )
  • A stronger stag covers a large part of the receptive females in its pack. ("Mating females")

indefinite:

  • Because of his back pain, Max should speak to a doctor once.
  • Our granddaughter wants to be a doctor.
  • Julia is our best doctor. (of all our doctors [♂♀] she is the best)
  • The doctor knows his patients. ( generalizing singular )
  • The smallest deer in the world is the pudu.

indefinite:

  • Every doctor can also train in the field of andrology.
  • Our granddaughter wants to be a doctor.
  • The gestation period for a Hind is six to nine months.
Plural The basic form designates exclusively male persons / animals if the context indicates that exclusively male persons / animals are meant. If the condition on the left is absent, the basic form does not indicate a specific gender. The derived form with a feminine suffix always denotes a purely feminine plural of people / animals.

certainly:

  • The Meyers' sons want to become doctors. (Sons)
  • The doctors at the state hospital no longer wear gowns during their rounds. (Comparison of doctors )
  • Two donkey stallions were taken as pack animals. (Stallions)

certainly:

  • Kristof Magnusson's novel tells the story of two Berlin doctors. (♂♂ or ♂♀)
  • The two donkeys in Constable's painting are in partial shade.

certainly:

  • Fortunately, there were also two doctors among the passengers.
  • But Kis, Saul's father, had lost his donkeys [...] ( 1 Sam 9,3  EU )

indefinite:

  • In Russia, male doctors are mostly in the minority in the college. (Adjective male )
  • Male dogs are called "males".

indefinite:

  • Some politicians think doctors make too much.
  • The first doctors to offer this treatment were two gynecologists in Munich.
  • Domestication of dogs began in the Stone Age.

indefinite:

  • The University of Zurich trained future female doctors as early as 1840.
  • Bitches also often show dominant behavior.
Derivation of feminine forms in languages ​​without noun genera

Some languages ​​that do not differentiate between masculine and feminine nouns also have a derivation of feminine forms.

This applies to Swedish, for example, where derivatives such as lärare → lärarinna (“teacher” → “teacher”) are still in use. However, these female forms are now considered out of date in Swedish and are mainly still used in historical texts: ( [Selma Lagerlöf] lämnade hemmet för att utbilda sig till lärarinna vid Högre Lärarinneseminariet i Stockholm. “[Selma Lagerlöf] left home to look at To train as a teacher at a higher teacher training college in Stockholm. ")

In Hungarian, too, where there are neither genera for nouns nor pronouns, feminine forms are derived from the basic forms of job titles: tanár → tanárnő ("teacher" → "teacher"). Although the basic form is not sex-specific, many Hungarian language users - unlike Swedish - find it inappropriate or annoying when it is used to refer exclusively to women.

Generic use of masculine in biosystematic classes

In many languages ​​there are words that simultaneously designate a certain biosystematic class and male representatives of this class. In German, this applies to some of the animal species, e.g. B. the bear (vs. the she-bear ), the lion (the lioness) , the stag ( the hind , the hind , the hind ).

The languages ​​in which the word “ human ” also means “ man ” include:

  • some Germanic languages: English (man) and Dutch (man) , but not West Frisian (minsk / man)
  • Most Romance languages: Latin ( homo ), Italian ( uomo ), Spanish ( hombre ), Portuguese ( homen ) and French ( homme ), but not Romanian ( om / bărbat )

In German, remnants of such a generic use of the word man can be found in some idioms ( twenty men , all men , bring something to the man , need am man , make the dead man , man over board , man and mouse ), compound words ( private man, everyone, man-years ) and derivations ( commercial , professional , male ) received.

Generic masculine as a basis for word formation

Even if there is a feminine alternative form obtained by moving a noun ( farmer → peasant woman , dog → bitch ), the basic form is also used in the formation of the word if the sex is indefinite or both female and male individuals are meant: peasant rule, peasant rule , peasant, peasant; Dog flea, bad dog, dog tired .

Female movement forms can only produce word formations if the latter are exclusively and specifically related to female individuals ( peasant pension, female teacher celibacy, teacher-like; lioness head ).

Pronouns

Generic masculine plural- them

In many languages ​​there is a masculine and a feminine personal pronoun for the 3rd person plural (she), whereby the masculine is also used generically. An example from French:

Males only L'entreprise embauche deux avocats. Ils vont gérer tous les litiges.
People of indeterminate sex or of both sexes L'entreprise embauche deux avocats. Ils vont gérer tous les litiges.
Females only L'entreprise embauche deux avocats. Elles vont gérer tous les litiges.
translation “The company is hiring two lawyers. They will handle all disputes. "

A similar situation can be found in all other Romance languages , but e.g. B. also in Icelandic, Greek , Serbo-Croatian and Hebrew . In French, the demonstrative pronoun celui in the plural also has a feminine form ( celles ) and a generically usable masculine form ( ceux ).

The planned language Volapük is one of the very few languages ​​that have an independent personal pronoun for large numbers of people of indefinite gender or both genders :

Males only löf oms odis
People of indeterminate sex or of both sexes Löf ons odis
Females only löf ofs odis
translation "They love each other"

Historically, there have been examples of an independent grammatical treatment of large numbers of people with indeterminate or both sexes in Gothic .

Generic er in languages ​​without noun masculine

Generic he in English and Swedish
Masculine generic masculine Feminine
English A teacher knows his students since he teaches them every day. A teacher knows his students since he teaches them every day. A teacher knows her students since she teaches them every day.
Swedish En lärare känner sina elever för att han lär dem varje dag. En lärare känner sina elever för att han lär dem varje dag. En lärare känner sina elever för att hon lär dem varje dag.
translation " A teacher knows his students because he teaches them every day." " A teacher knows his / her students because he / she teaches them every day." " A teacher knows her students because she teaches them every day."

A small number of languages ​​- including English, Afrikaans, and many planned languages ​​such as. B. Esperanto - has no gender in nouns, but distinguishes between masculine and feminine personal pronouns. The decision that a speaker of German may have to make with the noun (“generic masculine basic form or feminine derivative form with -in?”) Is only made by an English speaker in anaphoric use, i.e. H. if he wants to use personal pronouns that are related to the - actually sexusindifferent - noun.

The situation is very similar in languages ​​such as Swedish , where genera are differentiated between nouns, but not masculine and feminine, but only utr (personal) and neuter (non-personal). Other languages ​​with Utrum are Danish , Bokmål and West Frisian .

As long as the sex is determined (either “a male teacher” or “a female teacher”) there are no ambiguities in the languages ​​mentioned here. However, if the sex is to remain indefinite (“a teacher”), the generic masculine is used in the personal pronoun (English: he, him, his, etc .; Swedish: han, honom, hans , etc.). This peculiarity of traditional grammar is felt to be increasingly problematic in both the English and Swedish-speaking regions.

Indefinite pronouns

In German, some indefinite pronouns used as nouns also have characteristics of generic masculine. Although they have no gender themselves, these require the use of masculine personal pronouns:

  • It has to be not made lucky you unable to enjoy it.
  • who never ate his bread with tears

The same applies to the indefinite pronouns anybody, anybody, anybody, anybody, one, us, none, some, someone like me, your kind , etc. For someone and nobody , the Duden grammar describes not only the generic masculine use but also a feminine one:

  • She is someone who doesn't give up easily.
  • The neighbor is not someone with the / of I can talk.

Similar situations also exist in many other languages:

  • English: Nobody buys what he can get for free. (Much more common today: Nobody buys what they can get for free. )
  • Swedish: Ingen köper vad han kan få gratis. (Today occasionally also: Ingen köper vad hen kan få gratis. )
  • Dutch: Nobody koopt wat hij gratis kan krijgen.
  • French: Personne n'achète ce qu ' il peut obtenir gratuitement.

(Translation: "Nobody buys what he can get for free.")

Language criticism of the generic masculine

A general insight into the philosophy of language analysis, following on from the late Ludwig Wittgenstein, states that linguistic grammar “need not seduce us into hypostatizing our own entities ”.

Nevertheless, the generic masculine is now the subject of language criticism, especially from feminist linguistics . The generic use of the masculine leads to ambiguities - “Are people of indeterminate gender or specifically male persons meant?” - which can be more or less safely eliminated, at least with nouns, by disambiguating them ( see above ). The subject of language criticism are those cases in which the disambiguation fails (see below under ambiguity or inclusion of women ).

Numerous suggested solutions have been made for solving problems that may arise from the use of generic masculine, of which two types can be distinguished:

  • Equalization / feminization aims at the use of gender- appropriate personal names and in practice means an increased use of female words, for example female forms of function and occupation names ( teacher → teacher ). This path is taken particularly in gendered languages , i.e. in languages ​​that differentiate between masculine and feminine in pronouns and nouns (German, French, Spanish).
  • On the contrary, neutralization aims to avoid gender-specifying linguistic means and in practice means that sex-specific forms are replaced by unspecific forms as far as possible (e.g. mankind by humankind , mom / dad by parent ). Neutralization is primarily chosen in natural gender languages , i.e. in languages ​​that make a difference between feminine and masculine gender only in the pronouns, but not in the nouns (English, Swedish).

Generic use of the masculine in pronouns

English

Generic hey and singular they

In English, in addition to the generic he, there is traditionally the alternative of a singular they :

"A person can't help their birth."

"Nobody can care for his birth."

- William Makepeace Thackeray : Vanity Fair

Normative grammar, which emerged at the end of the 18th century, branded this practice. The British Parliament passed a law known as Lord Brougham's Act in 1850 , which stipulated that from then on the generic he could be used as the only anaphoric form in legal texts .

Studies to Understand the Generic Hey

Numerous studies have been carried out in English-speaking countries on the competence of readers to recognize a generic he as such - i.e. not preferably to refer to male persons.

With children

Children understand the concept of the generic he relatively late and until then believe that every he refers to a male person. In a group of 6-year-olds who were studied for a study published in 1980, only 28% understood the concept of generic he ; in the control group made up of college students, it was 84%. Later studies confirmed the findings from 1980. Of all the formulations examined, the singular they is the one that is most easily understood by children as sexually indifferent.

For female job seekers

A number of other studies have looked at the extent to which adult women feel attracted to job advertisements that use the generic masculine word. A study published in 1973 found that the female test subjects, in view of such adverts, were less willing to apply than the male test subjects, even if they had been qualified for the position.

A study published in 1981 led to the finding that women rate the chances of success of female job applicants higher if gender-neutral pronouns ( he or she , they ) are used in the job advertisement than if only the generic he appears in the job description .

For a study published in 1983, female and male test subjects were presented with excerpts from a text on ethical standards for psychologists, with the three control groups each reading different versions of the text: with the phrase “he and she”, with “she and he” and with the generic one hey . The study provided the finding that the female test subjects in the third group stated less often than in the other two groups that they would like to study psychology.

In adults in general

As early as the 1970s, studies showed that the generic he was generally not recognized by adult language users and was then only applied to male speakers. John Gastil ( University of Wisconsin – Madison ) discovered in 1990 that male test subjects also preferred the alternative formulation he / she to refer to male speakers. The wording they alone was understood by both male and female test persons to be sex-unspecific. A New Zealand study had found similar results that year. Mykol C. Hamilton (Center College, Kentucky) confirmed Gastil's findings in 1998 and was able to add that male test subjects misinterpreted generic formulations overall more often than female test subjects.

A 2009 study showed that adult subjects' problems understanding generic he has persisted in full since 1990.

Return of the singular they

In spoken English, the singular pronoun they  - especially in the United States  - became widespread in the 21st century and the generic he ("he") has even partly supplanted it. The influential US - Style Guide Chicago Manual of Style allows singular They in its 17th edition in 2018 in oral and informal written language; for formal written use it is only allowed in relation to individual persons who do not identify with the gender pronouns he ("he") or she ("she").

Using the singular they in comparison:

generic masculine he ... his ... him Every child loves his stuffed animal. It is precious to him and he needs it.
singular pronoun they ... their ... them Every child loves their stuffed animal. It is precious to them and they need it.
translation it ... his ... him Every child loves their stuffed animal. It is precious to him and it needs it.

Swedish

For Swedish, where until then only the masculine personal pronoun han ("he") and its feminine equivalent hon ("she") were available for anaphoric use , the linguist Rolf Dunås suggested in an article in Upsala Nya Tidning 1966, to create a third pronoun specifically designed to denote people of indefinite gender. He found the inspiration for the new made-up word hen in Finnish, which has no genera and uses a uniform pronoun hän ("he / she") for people of any gender. The discussion was initially more of an academic nature and largely limited to a specialist audience. At the beginning of the 21st century, parts of the LGBT community also began to use the word.

A broad public debate arose in Sweden only after the author Jesper Lundqvist and the illustrator Bettina Johansson published a picture book Kivi & Monsterhund in 2012 , which was the first Swedish children's book to use the pronoun hen . While the new word was rejected by the majority of the population in 2012, the situation shifted significantly until 2014. The word is used increasingly frequently in the Swedish press. In 2012 there were 416 “han” or “hon” for every 1 “hen”; In 2016 there were 159, in 2017 only 149. In 2013 the Swedish Language Council (Språkrådet) also recognized the use of the new word.

Application of hen in comparison:

Generic masculine Varje flykting for hjälp. Han och hans familj for en lägenhet. En advokat råder honom .
With the made-up word hen Varje flykting for hjälp. Hen och hens familj for en lägenhet. En advokat råder hen .
translation “Every refugee receives help. He / she and his / her family get an apartment. A lawyer advises him / her . "

So far, Swedish is the only language in which the introduction of a new sex-indifferent pronoun has gained wide social acceptance. In Norway in 2017 an initiative of Arbeiderpartiet for the national language Bokmål also a hen introduce, by the resistance of the conservative parties. In Danish, høn is gradually spreading, and in Icelandic, hán .

Generic use of the masculine in nouns (different languages)

In Spanish - especially in Internet jargon - written forms such as l @ s trabajador @ s (instead of generic masculine los trabajadores ) have been used moderately since the mid-1990s . An alternative and even less common form is to replace the sex-denoting vowel with an x ( lxs desempleadxs instead of los desempleados or las desempleadas ).

One of the few studies that was presented on the generic use of the masculine in Spanish dates from 1997.

In French, too, there are customs to replace gender-specific parts of endings with an @, e.g. limit @ s instead of (generic) masculine limités (or feminine limitées) .

Pascal Gygax and Ute Gabriel presented a study in 2008 on the use of language in French, where feminine forms of derivation hardly exist for job titles.

Generic use of the masculine in nouns (German language)

Alternatives to the generic masculine

Overview

Since the generic masculine is not understood by many language users as generic but as a real masculine, numerous suggestions have been made for its replacement, including:

Some of these suggestions found their way into laws and official regulations and language guides from the 1990s onwards (see laws and official regulations on gender-sensitive language , university guides ).

The Duden allows certain brackets and slashes, but neither Binnen-I nor similar forms:

  • Employees, teachers, colleagues
  • Colleagues, employees

In their magazine Sprachspiegel, the editors of the Dudens recommend breaking down the generic masculine into its gender-specific forms in certain cases. This applies in particular to direct contact (citizens) or in forms. The Duden editorial team does not declare the generic masculine term to be abolished, but recognizes that the "widespread effect of feminist language criticism " has set in and that when many texts are being written, nobody can avoid the "question of the appropriate linguistic consideration of women". According to Duden Volume 9 (Correct and Good German) , the “big I” is spelling wrong. The volume does, however, provide assistance on alternative formulation (splitting).

Limits to the substitutability of the generic masculine

In many cases, generic masculine can be replaced by means such as those mentioned above, so that confusion with real masculine is as good as impossible. In some cases, however, trying to replace it leads to problems:

Compounds

Substitution in compound nouns in which a generic masculine appears as a modifier is problematic :

  • Citizens champions, pedestrian crossing, readers letter
  • judge Lich, masterly way, farmers clever

Substituting the generic masculine form with alternative forms would result in excessively long and confusing words such as B. * citizens champions , * citizens (lbs) champion (indoor) , * Civil and citizens champion and -meisterinnen produce.

Accumulation of personal names

The risk of excessively long formulations also arises if several generic masculines are to be replaced in a sentence:

  • "For us the customer is still king."

Tautologies

Semantically , the replacement of the generic masculine is problematic if, according to the speaker's intention, the alternative form is intended to designate speakers of indeterminate gender, but is understood by the listeners to denote female speakers:

  • “Women are the more sensible drivers.” This is a tautology because all women drivers without exception are women.
  • “She is our best engineer.” This formulation suggests that although the person named is the best of female engineers, there are also male engineers who may be more qualified than her.

In cases like these, both names don't work either:

  • Girls are the better students.
  • Academic children are the more successful students.

Studies

Studies to Understand

Many language users find it difficult to recognize generic masculine as such and not only to refer to male speakers, even though the rules for the generic masculine and for its disambiguation are easy to convey. In the singular form ("any engineer"), generic masculine forms are more likely to be misunderstood than in the plural form ("all engineers"). One factor that contributes to the difficulty of understanding is the comparatively infrequent generic use of the masculine, which is far more commonly used to refer to male speakers.

As comparative studies have shown, the generic masculine is more often misunderstood in German than in French or Dutch, for example.

With children

The educational scientist Dries Vervecken ( FU Berlin ) has presented several studies, partly with co-authors, on the understanding and perception of the generic masculine in school children. In 2012 he showed that 6 to 12-year-old girls were more interested in occupations that were described to them if both names (engineer) were used in the texts than if they contained generic masculine. Two follow-up studies by the same author published in 2013 and 2015 confirmed this finding.

In adults

One of the first investigations into the understanding of the generic masculine in German comes from the linguist Josef Klein (1988). Klein submitted fill-in-the-blank fill-outs to 290 test persons in which generic masculine words were used and in which the speakers' sex should be added. 72% of the male and 67% of the female test subjects named men as speakers. Klein also examined a control group whose fill-in-the-blank (“Kölner Bürger”) instead of the generic masculine word contained both. In the control group, too, 61% of the male and 57% of the female test subjects reported male speakers. Since the use of both names in no way removed the lead of male gender specification, Klein concluded that the generic masculine, although to a certain extent, was by no means solely responsible for the non-thinking of women in mixed-sex groups, and that “the cross-situational stereotype of the dominance of the Mannes [...] is apparently anchored in deeper cognitive layers than in the grammar of word formation ”.

Studies carried out later confirmed Klein's findings: alternative formulations (especially with inner I, denominations and slashes; less with neutralization) are less frequently used by test subjects than generically used masculine exclusively to refer to male speakers. Lisa Irmen and Astrid Köhncke found in two experiments in 1996 that only 20% and 49% of the test subjects, respectively, understood that a generic masculine can also refer to female speakers. However, none of these studies could show an alternative formulation that resulted in a complete balance between female and male speakers.

As Klein had already noticed, male test subjects perceive certain formulations differently than female ones. A team of researchers from the University of Mannheim (1998) presented test subjects with texts in which certain occupational groups were reported on, partly with generic masculine, partly with alternative formulations (denomination, neutralization); the test subjects should then estimate the proportion of women in these occupational groups. In “typically male” occupations, the male test subjects estimated the proportion of women in neutralizing formulations the highest (31.5%; both answers: 27.63%; generic masculine: 23.56%). The female test subjects, on the other hand, rated it the highest if both were named (33.13%; neutralization: 23.44%; generic masculine: 17.06%). Ute Gabriel ( TNUN Trondheim ) and Franziska Mellenberger ( University of Bern ) observed in 2004 that male test subjects responded strongly to a replacement of generic masculine with alternative forms (by designating more female speakers), while the same manipulation showed only minor effects in the female.

In 2005, two teams of authors reviewed all studies on this topic: Friederike Braun, Sabine Sczesny and Dagmar Stahlberg (University of Mannheim); Lisa Irmen and Ute Linner ( University of Heidelberg ).

Use studies

The Germanist and politician Regula Bühlmann showed in an analysis of 36 articles from German-speaking Swiss daily newspapers in 2002 that the generic masculine is mainly used to designate people with high prestige , while terms are used more to designate people with less prestige. Another study from 2003, for which a corpus of 573 texts of various types was analyzed, did not confirm this finding.

Theoretical approaches

Semantic view

The premises of feminist linguistics included a close relationship between gender and sex right from the start, up to and including the view that gender is derived from sex (if not identical to sex ) and that the function of the article is gender and expressing sex. This view is u. a. back to Jacob Grimm , who had suspected in the 19th century that feminines in German always emerged where speakers should be referred to who are perceived as soft, passive and receptive. In the 20th century, authors such as Toshi Konishi and Donald J. MacKay took similar positions. In modern, structuralist linguistics today, however, the prevailing view is that gender allocation is completely arbitrary (= random).

In the next step, the representatives of the semantic view argued that the masculine, elevated to the norm, indicates the dominance of men in society. Generic masculines are both a symptom and source of a fundamental androcentrism . Authors such as Senta Trömel-roach went so far in the 1980s, the generic use of masculine as sexist classified and as a measure because they ignore women and exclusionary, was capable women violence inflict. Since language influences the thinking and perception of a language community, gender-equitable language is an obvious means of counteracting the disadvantage of women in society.

Androcentrism

In German, the possibilities of the designation of persons are fundamentally “asymmetrical” (with different sides), so that Schoenthal and Samel, for example, see them as androcentric (the man as the norm ). The masculine grammatical gender is presented as the norm and the feminine forms as the deviation. According to Schoenthal, this is associated with a positive evaluation of the norm and a negative evaluation of the deviation. Female job titles are usually derived from the male job title (teacher → teacher) . In the opposite case, for example for the traditionally female occupations midwife or nurse, no male equivalents are formed in Germany, but new words such as “ delivery assistant ” or “ nurse ”, from which female forms are derived: delivery assistant, nurse .

Until the 1980s, a common strategy used by women who had previously occupied male-dominated jobs was to use masculine terms for themselves (e.g. as engineers ) in order to gain recognition in the professional world (as specialists, not as women ). The “too strong” emphasis on the female element through the use of the ending -in was felt for a long time as not expedient (in the sense of the emancipation of women), especially since a special marking (marking) of women promotes the connotation that men are the norm and women the special case. At the latest with the onset of feminist language criticism , however, this strategy was abandoned. The task now is to change the negative meanings associated with the ending -in by adding positive things in connection with talking about women.

Missing communicative intention and ambiguity

The generic use of a masculine word presupposes the readiness of readers or listeners to refrain from their natural gender in terms with which they are referred to; this acceptance is not necessarily given. In such cases, avoidable disruptions in communication on the relationship level often occur. Taking into account the aspects of language economy and aesthetics, psychologist Nicola Döring from the Technical University of Ilmenau judges :

“Anyone who is serious about the readability of texts in the sense of an understanding-oriented communication concept should not only use language economics. After all, what use is a short and concise formulation if it is misunderstood in the end or raises other reception problems? "

- Nicola Döring : Objection: Male forms.

Since the generic masculine has the same form as the specific masculine (i.e. the designation for a male person or a group of exclusively male persons), the use of the generic masculine does not expressly convey whether female persons are really included. In addition, the context often does not allow disambiguation until very late . Especially in texts on historical events, it is unclear whether Celtic warriors or priests refer only to men (specific masculine) or to women and men (generic masculine). This inaccuracy in the expression makes it difficult to understand the text.

Criticism is also directed against generic masculine pronouns that do not refer correctly in certain contexts because they are perceived as gender-specific rather than gender-neutral. Due to the congruence rule in German, which affects interrogative pronouns , among other things , sentences like “Who forgot his lipstick in the bathroom” must be formed. Also indefinite pronouns are affected, so that statements such as "Menstruation is a bit different for each person" arise.

The sentence "1. the fiancé of the accused or [...] 2. the spouse of the accused [...]" ( Section 52 of the German Code of Criminal Procedure ) is an example of the confusion that the generic masculine can cause.

Structuralistic and generative grammar view

As Ivo Hajnal has shown, the feminist language criticism of the generic masculine can be theoretically justified with the aid of both the structuralist and the generative-grammatical marking concept.

If one starts from the structuralist concept of markedness, as it was developed by Roman Jakobson and made usable by Birgit Rabofski for feminist linguistics, the focus of the criticism of the generic masculine is the observation that nouns for naming sexus-feminine persons in German are mostly through affigations from the corresponding sex male or gender male noun. The feminine obtained through movement is formally marked compared to the masculine in a structuralistic sense and thus restricted in its distribution, while the unmarked masculine from a formal point of view is unmarked and can be used without restriction. The semantic consequence of this formal asymmetry is that the masculine - unlike the feminine - can be used generically.

With regard to the theoretical justification of feminist language criticism, however, the structuralist concept has a decisive flaw: in German there are not only generic masculines, but also generic feminines, such as the goose (with motional masculine the gander ). Even if this seldom occurs, the examples show that markedness relationships are not only given due to structural, language-immanent factors, but also reflect the perception of extra-linguistic reality (female geese are kept in far greater numbers than male ones).

Since the structuralist approach is unable to integrate extra-linguistic reality into its theoretical framework, the generative- grammatical concept of markedness, as established by the natural theorist Willi Mayerthaler , offers an alternative. Again it was Rabofski who developed this approach for feminist language criticism. If this theoretical framework is used as the starting point, the marking value is based on the extra-linguistic: the generic masculine in the student, for example, is based on the extra-linguistic perception that students are predominantly male.

View of the empiricists

Empirically oriented linguists like Friederike Braun, Sabine Sczesny and Dagmar Stahlberg, who, following linguists like Leonard Bloomfield, assess gender as arbitrary, have turned against semantic interpretations. These authors are primarily interested in investigating how test subjects interpret different linguistic forms (generically used masculine and alternative forms).

More than the representatives of the semantic point of view, the empirically oriented linguists direct their attention to possible further factors that determine whether a reader thinks only of male or female speakers in the face of generic masculine. The misunderstanding of generic masculine did not occur with the same frequency among all test subjects under all test conditions. For example, they read generic masculine in contexts in which, based on their knowledge of the world, they expect men to be spoken of, unlike in contexts in which they expect women to be spoken of.

The most important finding of empirical research is that readers often misinterpret the generic masculine as a real masculine, but that alternative formulations are also unable to create a balance between female and male speakers. The authors of the studies have concluded from this that the “non-thinking” of women is promoted by language, but not caused. In their opinion, the causes of gender role stereotypes are not to be found in grammar, but in far deeper layers of the cognition that has been inflicted by culture. Mere language policy will do little to change the systematic social disadvantage of women. The cultural and social anthropologist Ingrid Thurner ( University of Vienna ) warned in 2013 that “language justice” was an inexpensive diversionary maneuver that men willingly accepted, but would change very little in their supremacy.

See also

  • generic feminine (grammatically feminine words, used across genders)
  • generic neuter (factual words, generalized)
  • Priming ("facilitation": in psychology the influencing of the cognitive processing of a stimulus)
Current collection of materialsfPortal women: gender language  - current materials

literature

  • Ursula Doleschal: The generic masculine in German: A historical walk through German grammar writing from the Renaissance to postmodernism . In: Linguistics online . tape 11 , no. 2 , 2002, p. 39–70 , doi : 10.13092 / lo.11.915 ( PDF download page ).
  • Susanne Günther: Linguistics and gender research: does our language convey an androcentric worldview? In: Beate Kortendiek, Birgit Riegraf, Katja Sabisch (eds.): Handbook Interdisciplinary Gender Research . Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2019, ISBN 978-3-658-12495-3 , pp. 571-580.
  • Gabriele Diewald : For discussion: Gender equitable language as a topic of German linguistics - exemplarily exercised on the dispute over the so-called generic masculine. In: Journal for German Linguistics. Volume 46, Issue 2, 2018, pp. 283–299 ( doi: 10.1515 / zgl-2018-0016 ; PDF offer ).
  • Anja Steinhauer , Gabriele Diewald: The “generic masculine”. In: The same: Duden: Correct gendern - How to write appropriately and understandably. Published by the Duden editorial team. Dudenverlag, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-411-74357-5 , pp. 26-30 ( full text in the Google book search).
  • Lisa Irmen, Vera Steiger: On the history of the generic masculine: Linguistic, philosophical and psychological aspects in historical discourse. In: Journal for German Linguistics. Volume 33, Issue 2/3, December 2005, online: May 24, 2007, pp. 212-235 ( doi: 10.1515 / zfgl . 33.2-3.212 ).
  • Claudia Posch: caught up - hung up? Generic masculine and norms of gender equitable use of language. In: Christina Antenhofer, Cordula Schnegg, Andreas Oberprantacher (Hrsg.): Communication - Art - Politics: Perspectives of research in the humanities. University of Innsbruck 2011, pp. 207–227 (lecture series; online at academia.edu).
  • Marlis Hellinger, Christine Bierbach: One language for both sexes. Guidelines for Non-Sexist Use of Language. With a foreword by Irmela Neu-Altenheimer. German UNESCO Commission , Bonn 1993, ISBN 3-927907-32-4 ( PDF: 37 kB, 13 pages on unesco.de).

Disadvantages of gender-related language changes:

  • Dagmar Lorenz: The new women's language - About the linguistic apartheid of the sexes. First published in: Mother tongue. Journal for the maintenance and research of the German language. Issue 3, Sept. 1991. Ed .: Society for German Language, Wbn .; cited and available at ulrichdevries.de ( Memento from May 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  • Eberhard Foth: On the “gender neutral” (or: “gender equitable”) legal language . In: Juristische Rundschau (JR), 2007, pp. 410–412.

Linguistic-empirical studies:

  • Oriane Sarrasin, Ute Gabriel, Pascal Gygax: Sexism and attitudes toward gender-neutral language: The case of English, French, and German. In: Swiss Journal for Psychology. Volume 71, No. 3, 2012, pp. 113-124 ( doi: 10.1024 / 1421-0185 / a000078 ).
  • Franziska Massner: The generic masculine today: expression of linguistic sexism or a neutral form of language? Master thesis. Grin, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-640-55079-1 ( reading sample in the Google book search).

Web links

Wiktionary: generic  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wiktionary: Masculine

References and comments

  1. ↑ Gabriele Diewald , Anja Steinhauer : Duden handbook gender-equitable language: How to gender appropriately and understandably. Published by the Duden editorial team. Dudenverlag, Berlin April 2020, ISBN 978-3-411-74517-3 , pp. 20 and 81–82.
  2. ^ Gisela Klann-Delius : Language and Gender. Metzler, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-476-10349-8 , pp. 24, 26 and 29 f.
  3. ↑ a b Ursula Doleschal: The generic masculine in German . A historical walk through German grammar writing from the Renaissance to the Postmodern. In: Linguistics online . tape 11 , no. 2 , 2002, p. 39–70 , doi : 10.13092 / lo.11.915 ( bop.unibe.ch [accessed on April 13, 2020]).
  4. ^ Frederike Braun, Sabine Sczesny, Dagmar Stahlberg: Cognitive effects of masculine generics in German: An overview of empirical findings . In: Communications . tape 30 , no. 1 , 2005, p. 1–21, here page 3 , doi : 10.1515 / comm.2005.30.1.1 ( online at ac.uk [PDF]): “It is used when designations for males also serve to refer to people in general, to mixed-sex groups or to persons whose sex is unknown or irrelevant (eg, English forefathers, statesman, someone [...] he). "
  5. ↑ Franziska Massner: The generic masculine today: expression of linguistic sexism or neutral language form? Master's thesis 2009, Department of German Studies. Grin, Munich 2010, p. ??.
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  78. ^ Frederike Braun, Sabine Sczesny, Dagmar Stahlberg: Cognitive effects of masculine generics in German: An overview of empirical findings . In: Communications . tape 30 , no. 1 , 2005, p. 1–21, here: p. 3 , doi : 10.1515 / comm.2005.30.1.1 ( Online [PDF]).
  79. ↑ Lisa Irmen, Ute Linner: The representation of generic masculine personal names. A theoretical integration of previous findings . In: Journal of Psychology . tape 213 , 2005, pp. 167-175 , doi : 10.1026 / 0044-3409.213.3.167 ( abstract ).
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