Beyond pronouns

González Vázquez, Iz, Klieber, Anna and Rosola, Martina 2024. Beyond pronouns. The Oxford Handbook of Applied Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press, pp. 320-346. (10.1093/oxfordhb/9780192844118.013.37)

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Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to explore some trans and feminist concerns about the gendered aspects of languages beyond English, focusing on Spanish, Italian, and German. Historically, discussions about gendered language have often challenged the ways in which language can make women (in)visible, by addressing the implicit and explicit androcentrism and sexism in our language, in what can be called the visibility project. Recently, questions surrounding trans-inclusiveness and the possibility of avoiding gender markers altogether have become more prominent, often highlighting the issue of pronouns (e.g. the singular ‘they’). This can be called the gender-neutrality project. However, anglophone philosophy offers few discussions on how gender-neutrality or visibility strategies can be applied to languages that are more gendered than English. The chapter starts by showing how gender expresses itself in the grammatical structure of the three sample languages, and identifies some of their specific visibility and neutrality strategies that could be (or are already) applied to them. This leads to the ‘innovative project’ which constructs nuanced and novel ways to transform gendered grammatical structures. Depending on their application, these strategies can fulfil gender-neutrality goals in some cases and visibility goals in others. This highlights, among other things, the ways in which genderqueer people have attempted to shape their linguistic resources in different linguistic contexts, while also opening up avenues for new research when it comes to discussions of gender and language.

Item Type:	Book Section
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	English, Communication and Philosophy
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
ISBN:	9780192844118
Last Modified:	05 Jul 2024 13:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/170254

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