Language sexist

The term language sexist refers to a way of writing or of speaking perceived by some like carrying Préjugé S and developing or devaluing Stéréotype S, with respect to the Homme S or the Femmes. The Sexisme depends primarily on the times, of the cultures but also of the sociological situations even of the characters. The sexism appears when one expresses a differentiation towards somebody, on the criterion of his sex, a way manifestly moved for a given situation.

Sexism and French language

Sexism and language in Belgium

Although strongly influenced by the formal uses of the French language as spoken in France, the French-speaking people of Belgium practice these uses with generally less rigidity. One will notice it in particular in the less strict use of the Vouvoiement, or the Patronyme husband for the wife. These facts of language, at least for those present in the French of Belgium, are not without bond with the Dutch (which côtoie French especially with Brussels) in which feminization, as well as the Tutoiement, are socially more widespread or linguistically easier. Moreover, it is in general in the mediums more bathed in or close to the French culture book or literary, and socially more preserving, that the rigidity of a famous language male chauvinist pig will tend to be maintained, whereas in popular environments “instinctive” feminizations were never rare ( cf “police” seniority of the terms, “lawyer” or “president”).

Thus the French-speaking people of Belgium appeared sensitive to the debates on feminization which especially took place in the political communities and of the administration Frenchwomen in the years 1980. The exit, however, will have been different from the Hexagon, where the debate encountered a sharper resistance (see low). The day of the summer 1993 (June 21st), the Gouvernement of the French Community adopts the Decree “relating to the feminization of the names of trade, function, rank or title”, while choosing a very broad application of the provisions of this decree within the limits of attributions of the French Community. Feminization will be of setting in the administrations of the Community or in those located in area of French language, like in the works of teaching or research used in the establishments concerned with the French Community, and even of those partially being only financed by it. This act is relayed as of December of the same year by a decree of application of the Government of the Community (ratifying an opinion of the Superior council of the French language, Conseil then chaired by the linguist Jean-Marie Klinkenberg). This report/ratio lays down the rules of feminization, rules whose account the interested parties within the meaning of the Decree of June 1993 will have to hold. The Service of the French language of the French Community of Belgium published in this occasion, under the title Mettre at female the an informative handbook of rules and councils of use for submission to the administrations, editors and French-speaking educational establishments of Belgium, comprising a rich person lists terms.

Today, even if feminization is rather largely widespread among the French-speaking people of Belgium, fact which shows base sociétale that had this practice, cutting administrative very complex of Belgium makes that feminization is not uniformly practiced in all the administrative domains or public of French language (since all do not concern the authority of the French Community, like the federal authorities and regional of Brussels), including in places where one had expected that it is it as in the universities (where certain purists do not seem to hesitate to name themselves research director or promoter of memory , p.ex. ), which confirms the spirit of freedom of use that the Decree apart from the administrative field wanted to preserve. An example moreover of famous “the compromise to the Belgian”!

The logic of these new rules is indeed of pragmatic nature rather than claiming. It is more question “of ensuring the visibility of the women as well as possible” than to want to cure a denounced male chauvinism. Although one always speaks about formulations “sexists”, the generic use of male terms is officially not perceived as privileging the men (but, one implies, like occulting the women). Thus, the new rules of use privilege the intelligibility of the text and its legibility on the concern of feminization; it is thus advised not to misuse the “formulations written which do not have an oral correspondent”, like “employees”, “restorer/trice” or even “student (E)”. The new rules limit as the imposition of Néologisme S and Innovation S Linguistique S while considering for example as a feminization of only the Déterminant can suffir with words such those declining itself in “a professor” or “a doctor”, while leaving a number of them to the free choice of the users as for the case of the forms in - the Eure who are in addition imposed on the Quebec and in Suisse.

Sexism and language in France

Fields of manifestation of the language sexist

The sexism can appear in a certain number of uses:

  • titles and names of professions not having a female equivalent: an impossibility of the language which generally does not have a raison d'être as shows it the possible extensions of the language in other French-speaking countries;

  • the use of the patronymic name husband (it is still the rule by defect in the event of dissension between the husbands in spite of the projection which the possible choice of the two patronyms for the children represents);
  • the use of vocabulary more pejorative and more explicitly sexual with respect to the women;
  • use of the neutral , identical to the French masculine, when the sex is not specified, or to indicate groups including/understanding at the same time men and women (this last is particularly prone to debates).

Words to nominate the persons

There is an ambiguous use of the words indicating the male and female human beings of various ages. For example, the word " homme" indicate sometimes the human being (Homo sapiens) sometimes an human being of male sex.

From an etymological point of view, " homme" comes from Latin homo who means human. The Latin word to speak about the human beings of male sex is to vir , which appears in the adjective " viril". There are thus the following terms:

The " term; homme" should thus mean only very whole humanity, but is used to speak only about the male human beings, therefore as if they represented the totality of the human beings. That is not pain-killer because " homme" cannot be used to speak only about the women, just as " Femme" could not mean the whole of the human beings.

The words to designate the women are also ambivalent:

On a side, the word to designate an young girl, i.e. an young graduate of female sex, is the same one as that to propose filiation and the membership to the parents. Other, the word " garçon" indicate without ambiguity a young male human being, and that of " fils" filiation proposes. In other terms, there is no common word to speak about a female young graduate out of the field of filiation (girl/wire).

On a side, the word designating an adult woman is the same one as that designating a married woman, i.e. related to her husband. Other, the word " homme" alliance with a woman does not put too ahead, while the word " mari" , which does not have besides a female equivalent, is without ambiguity. There is thus no either common word to speak about a female adult person out of the field of alliance between husband.

Recent history

In 1984 is created, on the initiative of Yvette Roudy (member of the Socialist party), the first commission of terminology charged to study the use of female for the names of trades, the functions, the ranks and the titles. This initiative was accepted by critical comments, such as that of the Figaro Magazine ( enjuponnement of the vocabulary ) or that of France Soir ( clitocratie ).

In 1986, the circular of Laurent Fabius affirms that it is discriminatory to employ only the masculine.

In 1990, the Committee of the Ministers for the the Council of Europe recommends an elimination of the sexism in the language.

The fight for the elimination of the language “sexist” is not inevitably an internal conflict between men and women; many women do not see a disadvantage with its use, whereas certain men protest against his use.

Sexism and language with the Quebec

The use of titles equivalent to female vastly widespread, is very accepted and often obligatory in the Quebec professional life, including good of uses which appear only seldom in France, for example the docteure (although the female one of doctor already exists: lady doctor ) , the doctor, gouverneure, the minister, the Prime Minister, the mairess (or the mayor ), etc

In the formal writing, one retains roughly speaking the inclusion of female in the masculine, often with a remark that it is “with an only aim of reducing the text”. However, in the polemical speeches, it is very common to hear linings which include the women explicitly, like Québécois Québécoises and, all and all, Ordre of the nurses and male nurses of Quebec , etc

A notable example of the neologism with an aim of including the women occurred in Quebec, where a trade union decided to promulgate a neologism epicene for “professional or occupational” on the model of “faithful”; it became the Fédération of the professionèles . However, this solution, which received mixed reactions, is classified among the very radical options, even strange, to counter the sexism.

The language not sexist

The installation of a language “not sexist” is very important with the eyes of many people, in particular the feminist , which justify their point of view by many reasons. The principal one is that a language “sexist” marginalizes the women by proposing the men by defect. That is particularly important when it is a question of using a term such as president , whose male kind can bring to make think that it is natural that the position of president is held by a man. Other uses of the nonparallel type can also have a dépréciative connotation.

Several practices of language “not sexist” exist in French language:
A certain number of practices (nonofficial) aims at the language sexist in France. It is a question of introducing innovative linguistic contributions, primarily (for the moment) when one speaks about a made up group of people undifferentiated individuals or the two sexes:

  • use of brackets: “ musician () ”. The brackets can be also used to note an optional plural: “ it (S) musician () (S) ”.
  • use of the hyphen and its strong unionistic symbolic system : “ musician--S ”, “ justified ”, and even the article “ a ”…
  • use of the E Capital: “ motivéEs ”… Perhaps less levelling, because the capital letter more stresses femininity. It is the method employed in German.
  • the creation of words trans-sexes : “ Illes ” or “ els ” for “ They and they ”, “ celleux ” or “ ceulles ” for “ those and those ”, “ chanteureuses ” or “ chanteuseurs ” for singers and singers.
  • the termination Bi-genrée: “ actors/trices ” or “ actors-trices ”
  • use of term epicene, i.e. neutral from the point of view of the kind: to speak about “ people ” rather than of “ individuals ” (or of “ individual-E-S ”) with the risk of the change of direction; thus politically the nobody is equivalent to the individual. It will be noted however that nobody, although female, can be employed for male people while the substantive individual is male (the substantive individue is not correct) and, according to the Trésor of the French language computerized, cannot be used to nominate a female person: “Except possibility in the plural (individuals of the two sexes) and without pejorative nuance, one does not raise, in our documentation, of use of individual to designate a woman.”

The against-argument is that the use of the kind not marked, if it is accepted socially like neutral, product of the more readable texts from a strict typographical point of view, at least when one does not have the practice. Moreover, these methods are exclusively written and do not have an oral equivalent.

Other languages

Esperanto

Certain people show the Esperanto to be basically sexist, because the radical form of the words is the same one as the form male and different from the female form: doktoro = “doctor” (man or of unknown sex), doktorino = “lady doctor”; of the same doktoroj = “doctors” (men, men and women or of unknown sex), doktorinoj = “lady doctors”. In the same way for the pronouns, Li (“it”) can be generic, whereas ŝi (“she”) is always female. This asymmetrical treatment is not a characteristic of Esperanto, but rather a characteristic of the majority of the European languages. In each Romance Language, for example, a grammatical kind is assigned with each name - even with objects without sex, even in opposition with the biological sex (like guardia = “police” in Italian or Virilité in French, of female kind). In fact, with these assignements arbitrary of grammatical kind, the people who speak about the Romance or Germanic languages generally do not have the a priori sexists affirmed by the critics.

German

The debate on the feminization of the language is rather strong in the German-speaking countries, in particular in the mediums of left. Thus, although one can in German obtain the female one of a name by adding to it the suffix - in, it exists words which makes exception and for which the female one is not very used, or rather recent. In addition, as in French, the masculine can be used as generic form in the plural. It is in particular the aspect more criticized by the partisans of a feminist language. It thus became relatively frequent to use a plural in - Innen, i.e. female plural, but with a capital letter in order to indicate that it is about a plural mixed (die StudentInnen, die KollegInnen, etc). This use is particularly widespread in Austria. In Germany, one to him often prefers the form /innen (die Student/innen, die Kolleg/innen, etc). In an extremely marginal way, one replaces sometimes " man" (one) by " mensch" or " frau" , formed starting from " Mensch" (human) and " Frau" (woman), because of the similarity between " man" (one) and " Mann" (male man).

English

The English appears relatively neutral being from the point of view of the grammatical use of the kinds. There is not a singular exception, for the boats and other ships (in English ship ) which always take a female personal pronoun, she , as for a person. If not, the language includes/understands 3 kinds, female, male and neutral, the two first being used in theory to nominate only persons (possibly familiar animals) of the sex corresponding, the last of the things.

However, the word man , meaning " man masculin" , is the word at the base of mankind meaning " humanité". This particular relation is confirmed by the use of man to mean very whole humanity. There is thus same ambivalence as in French with the word man , a term meaning also sometimes male human being, sometimes humanity as a whole. See higher.

Czech

The Family name of a woman is put at female, Jana Tichá carries the same patronym as Miloš Tichý. In this case, tichý is an adjective and the female form of this adjective is tichá . When family name is a substantive, it is generally derived from the masculine by the addition from “- ová”: Eva Romanová and the sister of Romance Pavel. The form “- ová” is grammatically a Génitif and implies, to the great displeasure Féministes, the idea of possession (Mrs Nováková is literally the wife or the girl of Mr Novák).

Until there is this form little obligatory, was imposed by the Czechoslovakian law then Czech. More than sexist, one can see in this obligation, a vexatious measurement towards the linguistic minorities, forced to adopt the Slavic uses. From now on, the Czech wife of a foreign national or a member of a linguistic minority of the Czech Republic can choose between:

  • to keep its name of birth
  • to join its name of birth with that (unchanged) of its husband
  • to join his name of birth with the name slavized of his/her husband (what was already possible)
  • to adopt the name, slavized or not, of its husband

Let us note that the Czechoslovakian, innovative law on the matter, made it possible to the husband to join the name of his wife to his and that the first president, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk was one of the first has to show the example.

In 2006, the coming into effect of the Czech equivalent of the Civil pact of solidarity, since it makes it possible the Czech partner of amenable foreign to adopt its family name (as for the wives in a traditional marriage) which, for a Czech ear will be inevitably “male”, caused a reaction homophobe or misogynist. Certain legislators reactionaries tried to be opposed to this patronymic freedom granted to the lesbians - in vain.

See too

External bond

  • Vegan Tekno : “of the feminization of the texts”

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