donderdag 29 september 2011

For Women: the invisibility of women in the language

For some time I am working on my dissertation on the relationship between language and gender. The feminist linguistics sees language as one of many means of androcentric and patriarchal society in order to discriminate against women or make it invisible. Among other things, this comes from the use of the so-called generic masculine expression, to say: With regard to personal nouns, the masculine form is the standard to which women also have to count. So a teacher can just as easily be a teacher, but vice versa - God forbid! Finally, as it has not only Simone de Beauvoir described quite aptly, the man the standard and the woman just the other. As an independent being, the woman was not even thought along over the centuries, which impressively through the study of older legal texts, however, up until the 19th and 20 Century, is expressed. The fact that women no right to own property (not even her own dowry), no human and civil rights, let alone had the right to higher education was regarded for centuries as "natural law".

Which of us has not noticed: In this blog I use personal nouns, especially in the plural, only in the female form (the generic feminine), in the tradition of Luise Pusch. Interestingly, the visibility of women met just with women often in a radical rejection, while their men often face relaxed. If, as many claim, the masculine noun should actually include the feminine (which is already logically nonsense), the following sentence would be grammatically correct: * Each teacher brings their own chalk.

I can well imagine that many would like to post a comment on these remarks, so I would ask the same times to be objective. In this sense I wish all members of the largest disadvantaged group in the world a wonderful Women's Day. On that soon a woman will be an Austrian university rector, sitting more than 27.32% women in Parliament and more than a handful of women in supervisory and management boards. There are many areas still much to do! The language here is a very fundamental level, because language is always a reflection of society and language in turn can have an influence on the thinking.

Geen opmerkingen:

Een reactie posten