Gender in English
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A system of
Usage in English has evolved with regards to an emerging preference for gender-neutral language. There is now large-scale use of neuter they as a third-person singular instead of the default generic he when referring to a person of unknown gender. Certain traditional feminine forms of nouns (such as authoress and poetess) are also increasingly avoided, with the male form of such nouns (author and poet) having become gender-neutral.[1]
Gender in Old English
Old English grammatical gender was, as in other Germanic languages, remarkably opaque: that is, one often could not know the gender of a noun by its meaning or by the form of the word; this was especially true for nouns referencing inanimate objects. Learners would have had to simply memorize which word has which gender.[2]: 10 Although nouns referring to human males were generally masculine and for the most part words for human females were feminine, as Charles Jones noted, "it is with those nouns which show explicit female reference that the sex specifying function of the gender classification system appears to break down, ..." Most words referencing human females were feminine, but there was a sizable number of words that were either neuter or even masculine.[2]: 6–7 Here are the discrepant nouns referring specifically to human females as listed by Jones:[2]: 7
Noun | Gender | Meaning | Modern cognates |
---|---|---|---|
æwe | neut. | "married woman" | |
broþorwif | neut. | "brother's wife" | |
fæmenhadesmon | masc. | (of a woman) "virgin" | |
foligerwif | neut. | "prostitute" | |
forþwif | neut. | "matron" | |
freowif | neut. | "freewoman" | |
hiredwifmon | masc. | "female member of a household" | |
lærningmægden | neut. | "female pupil" | |
mædencild | neut. | "female child" | |
mægden | neut. | "young girl" | English maid, maiden; German das Mädchen |
mægdenman | masc. | (of a woman) "virgin" | |
mægþman | masc. | (of a woman) "virgin" | |
mennenu | neut. | "handmaiden" | |
næmenwif | neut. | "married woman" | |
sigewif | neut. | "victorious woman" | |
siþwif | neut. | "noble lady" | |
unrihtwif | neut. | "mistress" | |
wif | neut. | "woman" | English wife; German das Weib |
wifcild | neut. | "female child" | |
wiffreond | masc. | "female friend" | |
wifhand | masc. | "heiress" | |
wifmann | masc. | "woman" | English woman |
wynmæg | neut. | "winsome maid" | |
yrfenuma | neut. | "female heir" |
Old English had multiple generic nouns for "woman" stretching across all three genders: for example, in addition to the neuter wif and the masculine wifmann listed above, there was also the feminine frowe.[2]: 6 For the gender-neutral nouns for "child", there was the neuter bearn and the neuter cild (compare English child). And even with nouns referring to persons, one could not always determine gender by meaning or form: for example, with two words ending in -mæg, there was the female-specific neuter noun wynmæg, meaning "winsome maid" or attractive woman; as well as the gender-neutral noun meaning "paternal kindred" or member of father's side of the family, but which was grammatically feminine: fædernmæg.[2]: 7–8
In short, inanimate objects are frequently referred to by gendered pronouns, and, conversely, there exist nouns referring to people having a grammatical gender that does not match their natural gender. Nonetheless, in Old English, pronouns may follow natural gender rather than grammatical gender in some cases. For details of the declension patterns and pronoun systems, see Old English grammar.
Decline of grammatical gender
While inflectional reduction seems to have been incipient in the English language itself, some theories suggest that it was accelerated by contact with Old Norse, especially in northern and midland dialects.[3] This correlates with the geographical extent of the Viking Danelaw in the late 9th and early 10th centuries: for almost a century Norse constituted a prestige language with regard to the southern Northumbrian and east Mercian dialects of Old English.
By the 11th century, the role of grammatical gender in Old English was beginning to decline:
Gender loss began in the north of England; the south-east and the south-west Midlands were the most linguistically conservative regions, and Kent retained traces of gender in the 1340s.[5] Late 14th-century London English had almost completed the shift away from grammatical gender,[5] and Modern English retains no morphological agreement of words with grammatical gender.[8]
Modern English
Gender is no longer an inflectional category in Modern English.[9] Traces of the Old English gender system are found in the system of pronouns. Nonetheless, Modern English assumes a "natural" interpretation of gender affiliation,[10] which is based on the sex, or perceived sexual characteristics, of the pronoun's referent. Exceptions to this generality are few and debatable, for example anaphoric she referring to ships, machines, and countries[10] (see below). Another manifestation of natural gender that continues to function in English is the use of certain nouns to refer specifically to persons or animals of a particular sex: widow/widower, postman/postwoman etc.
Linguist
Personal pronouns
The third-person singular personal pronouns are chosen according to the natural gender of their antecedent or referent. As a general rule:
- he (and its related forms him, himself, his) is used when the referent is male, or something to which male characteristics are attributed;
- she (and her, herself, hers) is used when the referent is female, or is an object personified as female[12] – this is common with vessels such as ships and airplanes, and sometimes with countries. An example is in God Bless America: "Stand beside her, and guide her through the night with a light from above."
- it (and itself, its) is used when the referent is something inanimate or intangible, a non-animal life-form such as a plant, an animal of unknown sex, or, less often, a child when the sex is unspecified or deemed unimportant.[13] It is also used in the interrogative for people in some phrases such as, "Who is it?".
Pronoun agreement is generally with the natural gender of the referent (the person or thing denoted) rather than simply the antecedent (a noun or noun phrase which the pronoun replaces). For example, one might say either the doctor and his patients or the doctor and her patients, depending on one's knowledge or assumptions about the sex of the doctor in question, as the phrase the doctor (the antecedent) does not itself have any specific natural gender. Also, pronouns are sometimes used without any explicit antecedent. However, as described above (the example with child and daughter), the choice of pronoun may also be affected by the particular noun used in the antecedent.
(When the antecedent is a collective noun, such as family or team, and the pronoun refers to the members of the group denoted rather than the group as a single entity, a plural pronoun may be chosen: compare the family and its origins; the family and their breakfast-time arguments. See also synesis.)
When the referent is a person of unknown or unspecified sex, several different options are possible:
- use of he or she, he/she, s/he, etc.
- alternation or random mixture of she and he
- use of singular they (common especially in informal language)
- use of it (normally only considered when the referent is a young child)
- use of generic he(traditional, but not recommended by modern grammars)
Transgender and non-binary people
Animals
In principle, animals are triple-gender nouns, being able to take masculine, feminine and neuter pronouns. However, animals viewed as less important to humans, also known as ‘lower animals’, are generally referred to using it; higher (domestic) animals may more often be referred to using he and she, when their sex is known.[17] If the sex of the animal is not known, the masculine pronoun is often used with a sex-neutral meaning.[17] For example:
Person A: Ah, there's a spider
Person B: Well put him outside[17]
Animate pronouns he and she are usually applied to animals when personification and/or individuation occurs.[17] Personification occurs whenever human attributes are applied to the noun.[17] For example:
A widow bird sat mourning for her love.[17]
Specifically named animals are an example of individuation, such as Peter Rabbit or Blob the Whale.[17] In these instances, it is more likely that animate pronouns he or she will be used to represent them.[17]
These rules also apply to other triple-gender nouns, including ideas, inanimate objects, and words like infant and child.[17]
Metaphorical gender
Gendered pronouns are occasionally applied to sexless objects in English, such as
Although the use of she and he for inanimate objects is not very frequent in Standard Modern English, it is fairly widespread in some varieties of English.[17] Gender assignment to inanimate nouns in these dialects is sometimes fairly systematic. For example, in some dialects of southwest England, masculine pronouns are used for individuated or countable matter, such as iron tools, while the neuter form is used for non-individuated matter, such as liquids, fire and other substances.[17][19]
One common use of metaphorical gender is referring to named ships as she. This is the case even for ships named after men, such as
The
She is also sometimes used as an alternative to it for countries, when viewed as political entities.[26]
Other pronouns
Other English pronouns are not subject to male/female distinctions, although in some cases a distinction between animate and inanimate referents is made. For example, the word who (as an interrogative or relative pronoun) refers to a person or people, and rarely to animals (although the possessive form whose can be used as a relative pronoun even when the antecedent is inanimate), while which and what refer to inanimate things (and non-human animals). Since these pronouns function on a binary gender system, distinguishing only between animate and inanimate entities, this suggests that English has a second gender system which contrasts with the primary gender system.[17] Relative and interrogative pronouns do not encode number. This is shown in the following example:
The man who lost his head vs. the men who lost their heads[17]
Other pronouns which show a similar distinction include everyone/everybody vs. everything, no one/nobody vs. nothing, etc.
Nouns such as ship can be indicated by the feminine pronoun she but not the relative pronoun who.
Gender-specific words
Apart from pronouns, gender can be marked in personal names and certain titles.[27] Many words in modern English refer specifically to people or animals of a particular sex.[28]
An example of an English word that has retained gender-specific spellings is the noun-form of blond/blonde, with the former being masculine and the latter being feminine. This distinction is retained primarily in British English.[29]
Certain words' spellings are indicative of their original grammatical genders, which may not correspond to their natural genders, for example abscissa, which is derived from a Latin feminine word. Certain foreign expressions used in English exhibit distinctions of grammatical gender, for example tabula rasa.
Certain gender-indicative suffixes denoting humans eliminate any practical distinction between natural gender and grammatical gender (examples:
Many words that retain their feminine endings refer to geographical regions (for example Africa) and stars (for example lucida).
Regional variations
Speakers of West Country English may use masculine (rather than neuter) pronouns with non-animate referents, as can be seen in Thomas Hardy's works.
A similar case is found in Newfoundland English. Harold Paddock observed the following in 1981:
Nouns seem to possess a well defined but covert system of grammatical gender. We may call a noun masculine, feminine or neuter depending on the pronouns which it selects in the singular. Mass or non-count nouns (such as frost, fog, water, love) are called neuter because they select the pronoun it. Count nouns divide into masculine and feminine. Female humans and most female animals, as well as all types of vehicles (land, air and sea) are feminine, in that they select the pronouns she, her. Other count nouns are masculine in that they select the pronouns he, 'en.[30]
Examples of "masculine" nouns in Newfoundland English are hat, shovel, book, and pencil; "feminine" are boat, aeroplane; "neuter" nouns include water, fog, weather, and snow.[30]
Inanimate count nouns in Newfoundland Vernacular English differ from those in Standard English in that they are either masculine or feminine. Specifically, if an inanimate count noun denotes a mobile entity, then it is feminine; otherwise such a noun is masculine. Such a gender assignment is similar to but slightly different from that in Wessex Vernacular English. In Wessex Vernacular English, a non-human count noun (be it animate or not) is regarded as masculine, for example the word cow is considered as masculine.[30]
This feature is stigmatized, widely regarded as a lower class or incorrect way of speaking. Nonetheless, one may find such a gender assignment less counterintuitive as nouns such as ship and boat can be referred to by the feminine pronoun in Standard English.[30]
Gender neutrality in English
Gender neutrality in English became a growing area of interest among academics during
Features of gender-neutral language in English may include:
- Avoidance of gender-specific job titles, or caution in their use;[36]
- Avoidance of the use of man and mankind to refer to humans in general;[37]
- Avoidance of the use of he, him and his when referring to a person of unspecified sex (see under § Personal pronouns above).[37]
Certain naming practices (such as the use of Mrs and Miss to distinguish married and unmarried women, respectively) may also be discouraged on similar grounds. For more details and examples, see Gender neutrality in English.
See also
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/99/Wiktionary-logo-en-v2.svg/40px-Wiktionary-logo-en-v2.svg.png)
References
Notes
- ISBN 978-0-19-957112-3.
- ^ OCLC 16404179.
- ^ Curzan 2003, p. 53.
- ^ Curzan 2003, pp. 84, 86: "[T]he major gender shift for inanimate nouns in written texts occurs in late Old English/early Middle English, but [...] the seeds of change are already present in Old English before 1000 AD."
- ^ ISBN 0-521-66227-3.
- ^ Curzan 2003, p. 86: "[G]rammatical gender remained healthy in the personal pronouns through late Old English; it is not until early Middle English that the balance of gender concord in the pronouns tips towards natural gender, at least in the written language."
- ^ Shinkawa, Seiji (2012). Unhistorical Gender Assignment in Laʒamon's Brut. Switzerland: Peter Lang.
- ^ ISBN 90-272-1841-2.
- ^ Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (2002).
- ^ . Retrieved 3 November 2020.
- ^ Whorf, Benjamin Lee (1945). 'Grammatical Categories', Language 21: 1–11.
- ^ JSTOR 453074.
- ^ Curzan 2003, pp. 2, 23
- ^ "Gender Census 2020: Worldwide Report". Gender Census. 7 November 2020. Retrieved 12 November 2020.
- ^ "Neopronouns Explained" (PDF). The Office of Intercultural Engagement. University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 November 2020. Retrieved 29 May 2022.
- ^ Binkley, Collin (19 September 2015). "Pick your own pronoun at university". Toronto Star. Toronto Star. Associated Press. Archived from the original on 2017-02-18. Retrieved 24 April 2016.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Siemund, Peter (2008). Pronominal Gender in English: A Study of English Varieties form a Cross-Linguistic Perspective. New York: Routledge.
- ^ a b "Metaphorical Gender in English: Feminine Boats, Masculine Tools and Neuter Animals". Druide. October 2017. Retrieved 6 December 2019.
- Authorized Version), here shewed in the Gospel of St Matthew, v,13: Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.
- ISBN 0-226-28705-X.
- ^ Meaning of she in English
- ^ Are Ships, Cars, and Nations Always Called 'She'?
- ^ https://web.archive.org/web/20100302044714/http://www.lib.mq.edu.au/all/journeys/ships/glossary.html Glossary of Nautical Terms (As used in the late 18th and early 19th centuries)
- ^ p. 80-81 [1] ""
- ^ For example, the U.S. Navy history office says it was due to ships giving life and sustenance like a mother.[2] There are many popular satirical reasons and collections thereof, such as "it takes a lot of paint to keep her good-looking". [3]
- ISBN 0-521-43146-8.
- ^ Cutler, Sylvia (28 January 2015). "Sexist Job Titles and the Influence of Language on Gender Stereotypes". | College of Humanities. Retrieved 2 March 2024.
- ISBN 9780203455944. Retrieved 2 March 2024.
- ^ "How to Use Blond vs. blonde Correctly". grammarist.com. 22 June 2011. Retrieved 2019-11-05.
- ^ Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg.
- Università degli Studi di Padova. Retrieved 2 March 2023.
- ^ Wooldridge, Michael (15 May 2015). Postructuralism and Feminism: The Interplay between Gender, Language and Power (Thesis). E-International Relations. Retrieved 2 March 2023.
- ISBN 9780521152211.
- ^ Curzan 2003, pp. 39, 151, 156.
- ^ Cameron 1992, p. 29.
- ^ "English Grammar Lessons - Gender Usage - ELC". ELC - English Language Center. 2017-06-07. Retrieved 2017-10-24.
- ^ a b Warren, Virginia L. "Guidelines for Non-Sexist Use of Language". American Philosophical Association. Archived from the original on 2 March 2020. Retrieved 2 March 2024.
Bibliography
- Cameron, Deborah (1992). Feminism and Linguistic Theory (2nd ed.). New York, NY: ISBN 978-0-312-08376-2.
- Curzan, Anne (2003). Gender Shifts in the History of English. Cambridge: ISBN 978-0-521-82007-3.