John Narvaez
I recently watched a TED talk by Lera Boroditsky on how languages shape the way we think. One of her examples pointed out the relationship between grammatical gender and the perceptions that this notion creates in the minds of speakers of languages that use it. She mentioned how, for example, a Spanish speaker would associate stereotypically male words to describe nouns such as “bridge” (“puente”, a masculine noun) while German speakers would assign stereotypically feminine words to describe the same bridge because bridge in German is a feminine word.
I set out to test this idea and surveyed a few friends (5 male, 5 female) asking them to give me the first adjective or word that came to mind when I mentioned a mix of feminine and masculine nouns in Spanish. I chose 6 lexically-linked words: Puente (bridge), casa (house), iglesia (church), edificio (building), estadio (stadium) and piscina (pool). I have translated the results of my survey to share them with you and hopefully bring up some discussion on the implications of this issue in language teaching:
| Spanish word | Associated adjectives |
| Puente (masc.) | Strong, long (x2), connected, magnificent, big (x4), old. |
| Casa (fem.) | Beautiful (x2), welcoming, pretty (x2), new, warm (x2), big, white |
| Church (fem.) | Spiritual (x2), sacred (x2), Catholic, blind, hypocrite, quiet, calm, old, beautiful. |
| Edificio (masc.) | Magnificent, strong, crowded, high (x5), modern, gigantic. |
| Estadio (masc.) | Big (x4), noisy (x2), sporty, joyful, festive, new. |
| Piscina (fem.) | Refreshing, fun, calm (x2), Olympic, relaxing, warm, fresh, deep (x2). |
Consistently, feminine and masculine nouns are associated with stereotypical female and male qualities respectively. Sociolinguistically, this offers interesting insight into the ways in which societal roles and ideologies about women and men have shaped the grammatical construct of gender in the minds of these speakers. The lexical choices to respond to this task are a sample of “gender stereotypes according to which women should display communal/warmth traits, and men should display agentic/competence traits” (Menegatti & Rubini, 2017, p.2). These choices also signal how women can easily be erased from mental representations that are socially constructed around men because of conventional patterns of behavior rooted in “characteristics and activities required by individuals of each sex in their sex-typical occupations and family roles” (Menegatti & Rubini, 2017, p.4). When asked about why a house is beautiful and not strong or magnificent, some of my friends stated that they linked their response to their mothers and that words like house and church spark some sort of “motherly” feel to them. This is consistent with the sociocultural reality of most societies in Latin America where gender roles are so tightly dictated by social conventions.
The implications of this simple experiment for my own teaching of Spanish are noteworthy. This has brought awareness of the issue so that I could engage in critical language awareness that could make my students conscious of these dynamics as well. I believe there is a sense of empowerment for equality in such an awareness because “given that semantic labels automatically activate information associated with the label, gender stereotypes are activated by gender-related words even in unprejudiced people who do not endorse the stereotype” (Menegatti & Rubini, 2017, p.5). These discussions in the language classroom bring a sense of relevance and meaning to language learning and the curriculum, thus allowing all voices to be heard and represented.
What are your thoughts on the matter? Do you think that this critical language awareness is a good first step to combat linguistic invisibility of women and gender inequality?
I invite you to reproduce the experiment with English speakers and share your findings. I look forward to your comments.
References
Menegatti, M., & Rubini, M. (2017). Gender Bias and Sexism in Language. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.470
That’s really interesting, John. Did you also ask speakers of non-gendered (or less-gendered) languages to describe the nouns? It would be interesting to know whether the stereotypical associations are from linguistic understandings, from cultural norms, or (more realistically) both? I always wondered why it mattered so much growing up learning French to memorize whether something was masculine or feminine. Is there, or do you think there ought to be, a move toward gender neutral articles in Spanish? If articles were neutral then the gender of the noun wouldn’t matter so much, no?
Thank you for your comment James. I have read of initiatives from feminist and LGBT groups who are pushing for different forms of expression of gender in Spanish. Some of the ideas that people have proposed are the use of @ in words like “todos” (tod@s) which means everyone, but that has a masculine connotation because it morphologically ends with -o, a marker of masculine gender. By adding the @, both the feminine and masculine genders are included. Another proposal is using -x (todxs), a move that eliminates the binary man-woman and gender in words and that also gives representation to the spectrum of the LGBTI community. This form is generally used in writing, and many scholars, specially in the US and Spain are currently using it as a way to promote a change to more neutral and inclusive language. Another proposal/form I’ve come across is the use of “e” (todes) to include all those who do not define themselves with a specific gender. This form in particular, arguably encompasses all people in the complex spectrum of sexual diversity.
The topic created big controversy a few months ago, to the point that the Real Academia de la Lengua Española published a statement in which they rejected the use of @, x, or e as markers of gender. Their argument was based on the premise that these affixes are foreign to the morphology of Spanish and that no linguistic change -at the grammatical level, is produced because it is imposed by a group of speakers. The Academy ratified the grammatical notion of using generic masculine as the norm. They also pointed out that referring to both genders in expressions like “todos y todas” is unnecessary and goes against the principle of “linguistic economy”. What is debatable, though, is the need for new ways to express these new realities and the ideological charge that Spanish currently has by emphasizing the masculine generic forms. Promoting linguistic change at this level seems like an overwhelming endeavour; only time will tell us whether this fight was worth fighting or if the force of centuries of usage and social convention make it a trend that will fade away as it does not resonate with the ways Spanish is used, at least in the vast number of social circles of people’s everyday life.
John
John, you have opened up a fascinating field for further research and discussion! This whole question of gender-neutral language and exactly what grammatical “gender” means has, I think, never been so fraught as it has become this decade. Linguists of course will staunchly hold that grammatical gender and biological sex have nothing to do with each other. I do and don’t agree…
In any case, in response to James’s query about “a move toward gender neutral articles in Spanish”—I am not sure such a thing would be possible, at least not in a top-down fashion. Of course English used to have grammatical gender, very much the way modern German does—even worse than the Romance languages, because there were THREE genders (neuter as well as masculine and feminine): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_English#Decline_of_grammatical_gender …but the “decline” happened over centuries, and had nothing to do with any kind of politics or anybody’s volition.
Here is a link to the funniest send-up of grammatical gender ever written (by Mark Twain, 1880!): https://www.cs.utah.edu/~gback/awfgrmlg.html
It includes many gems along the lines of the following, and always cheers me up. Critical language awareness may not be able to solve the underlying “problem”, but I think slathering on lots of it certainly can’t hurt!
“Gretchen.
Wilhelm, where is the turnip?
Wilhelm.
She has gone to the kitchen.
Gretchen.
Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden?
Wilhelm.
It has gone to the opera.”
This is very interesting, John! I thought about these words, and here is what came up to my mind. Bridge – long, house – big, church – beautiful, building – square, stadium – noisy, pool – fun. My first language (Japanese) has no grammatical gender, but apparently, I got similar answers to your Spanish-speaking friends. It’d be interesting to see what the result would be if there were more words. Also, I see that culture does affect the way people think (i.e., house – white, church – Catholic). Thank you for sharing!
-Yuri