The Influence of Feminism and LGBTQ+ Movements on Language Change in English: The Expansion of Gender-neutral Language

FACULTADE DE FILOLOXÍA THE INFLUENCE OF FEMINISM AND LGBTQ+ MOVEMENTS ON LANGUAGE CHANGE IN ENGLISH: THE EXPANSION OF GENDERNEUTRAL LANGUAGE María del Pilar Quintana Teixeira Director: María Belén Méndez Naya Traballo de Fin de Grao Curso académico 2021-2022 Grao en Lingua e Literatura Inglesas Universidade de Santiago de Compostela FACULTADE DE FILOLOXÍA THE INFLUENCE OF FEMINISM AND LGBTQ+ MOVEMENTS ON LANGUAGE CHANGE IN ENGLISH: THE EXPANSION OF GENDERNEUTRAL LANGUAGE María del Pilar Quintana Teixeira Director: María Belén Méndez Naya Traballo de Fin de Grao Curso académico 2021-2022 Grao en Lingua e Literatura Inglesas Universidade de Santiago de Compostela Table of contents List of tables and figures ................................................................................................. I 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 1 2 Chapter 2. Context ................................................................................................. 3 2.1 History of feminism ........................................................................................... 3 2.1.1 Beginnings .................................................................................................. 3 2.1.2 The first feminist wave ............................................................................... 4 2.1.3 The second feminist wave .......................................................................... 5 2.1.4 The third feminist wave .............................................................................. 6 2.1.5 The fourth feminist wave? .......................................................................... 7 2.2 History of the LGBTQ+ community ................................................................. 8 2.2.1 Origins ........................................................................................................ 8 2.2.2 From the 19th to the 20th century ................................................................. 9 2.2.3 The 21st century ........................................................................................ 12 2.3 Differentiating sex and gender ......................................................................... 13 3 Chapter 3. Language and gender ........................................................................ 16 3.1 How do speakers of English express gender through language? ..................... 16 3.1.1 Natural gender in English ......................................................................... 16 3.1.1.1 Lexical gender ................................................................................... 17 3.1.1.2 Social gender ..................................................................................... 18 3.1.1.3 Referential gender ............................................................................. 18 3.2 Constructing gender through language ............................................................ 18 3.2.1 Use of generics in language ...................................................................... 21 3.3 The consequences of gendering ....................................................................... 22 3.3.1 Binarism ................................................................................................... 23 3.3.1.1 Outside the gender binary: transgender, non-binary and/or genderqueer people…… ......................................................................................................... 24 3.3.2 The consequences of gendered language for individuals who identify as women.. …………………………………………………………………………...26 3.3.3 The consequences of gendered language for individuals that do not ascribe to the gender binary ................................................................................................ 30 4 Chapter 4. The influence of the feminist and the LGBTQ+ community movements on the English language: gender-neutral language ............................... 34 4.1 The beginnings of gender-neutral language ..................................................... 34 4.2 The arrival of the LGBTQ+ community .......................................................... 35 4.3 Defining gender-neutral language.................................................................... 36 4.4 Is gender-neutral language necessary?............................................................. 38 4.4.1 The case of hen in Swedish ...................................................................... 41 4.5 Some problems of gender-neutral language .................................................... 42 5 Chapter 5. Empirical analysis: actor, police officer and firefighter.................. 44 5.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................... 44 5.2 Methodology .................................................................................................... 44 5.2.1 Actor ......................................................................................................... 46 5.2.2 Police officer............................................................................................. 49 5.2.2.1 Ngram Viewer ................................................................................... 52 5.2.3 Firefighter ................................................................................................. 54 5.2.3.1 Ngram Viewer ................................................................................... 57 5.2.4 Overall discussion of the results ............................................................... 59 6 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 60 References...................................................................................................................... 63 I List of tables and figures Table 1. Third person singular pronouns collocating with the noun actor 47 Table 2. Third person singular pronouns collocating with the noun police officer 51 Table 3. Third person singular pronouns collocating with the noun firefighter 56 Figure 1. Evolution of actor's feminine collocates 48 Figure 2. Frequency policeman 50 Figure 3. Frequency police-woman 50 Figure 4. Frequency police officer 50 Figure 5. Evolution graph policeman vs. police officer. 52 Figure 6. Use of police officer in fiction (6th column) 53 Figure 7. Use of policeman in fiction (6th column) 53 Figure 8. Use of police officer in the news. 54 Figure 9. Frequency firewoman 55 Figure 10. Frequency fireman 55 Figure 11. Frequency firefighter 56 Figure 12. Evolution graph firefighter vs. fireman 58 1 1 Introduction In the last few decades, the debate on the use of gender-neutral or gender-inclusive language has gained more and more prevalence in many fields. The origins of the endorsement of the use of this type of language are very much intertwined with the feminist movement and the emergence of queer studies in the 1990s. However, genderneutral language has always faced opposition from certain sectors of society who deem it unnecessary and/or a corruption of language. In spite of such resistance, in the last two decades, there has been a shift in society’s opinion on gender-neutral language as we have seen how some organisations, such as dictionaries and governmental authorities, have started to implement gender-neutral guidelines. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the relationship between the feminist and LGBTQ+ movements and the expansion of gender neutral-language in the English language. The interest on this topic rises from a personal interest on how society’s gender construct is transmitted through language and how it can affect gender minorities and oppressed genders. Additionally, the exponential growth in the last few years, mainly in social media and amongst young people, of the promotion and use of gender-neutral has also arouse a personal interest on its history and possible benefits. For the purpose of investigating the aforesaid matters, this dissertation will first provide a theoretical background based on relevant investigations and theories on the topics. All the information will be gathered from pertinent books and webpages. Then, a small corpus search will be realised with a view to investigate if there has been an increase in the use of gender-neutral terms. Regarding the structure of this dissertation, it is composed of four themed chapters. In Chapter 2, an outline on the history of the LGBTQ+ and feminist movements, focusing mainly on the United Kingdom and the United States of America, and an explanation of the difference between the notions of sex and gender will be given. This will set the grounds to the next chapter in which we will examine the construction of gender through language and what gendering entails for oppressed gender identities. Chapter 4 is concerned with the origins of gender-neutral language and a discussion on whether it is needed in today’s society. The dissertation will then go on, in the Chapter 5, with a small corpus search on the gender-neutral words actor, police officer and firefighter. The results will be discussed and, in the case of them showcasing an increase in the usage of such words, we will review whether it has been a consequence of the aforementioned 2 movements. To sum up, a conclusion about all the gathered information will be given at the end. 3 2 Chapter 2. Context 2.1 History of feminism 2.1.1 Beginnings The roots of feminist movement have been widely discussed. Some situate its birth in ancient Greece with Sappho, others maintain that feminism had its inception in the medieval period with figures such as Hildegard of Bingen or Christine de Pisan (Rampton, 2015). Nonetheless, based on the entry feminism in Encyclopedia Britannica (Burkett & Brunell, 2021), in Western history, there is proof that there were protests against women’s restrained and subjugated position in society already from ancient times. It is known that, in the 3rd century BCE, Capitoline Hill and the Forum in ancient Rome were blocked by women after consul Marcus Porcius Cato tried to stop the abolishment of laws that restricted women from using expensive goods. Nevertheless, actions like this were scarce for most of the recorded history. Other attempts to improve women’s conditions and status in society were Christine de Pisan’s, a French feminist philosopher, demand for female education during the late 14th and early 15th centuries. Then, Laura Cereta, a Venetian woman, would follow de Pisan’s footsteps by publishing several letters that presented numerous complaints and challenges that women had to fight against. Such complaints went from the need for female education to marital oppression. By the end of the 16th century, with the publication of Moderata Fonte’s Il merito delle donne, the criticism of women’s situation in society had become a literary subgenre. The debate about women’s place in society and the fight for women’s education would reach England around that time as well. Throughout the 16th century, pamphleteers and polemicists enrolled in the discussion about the true nature of womanhood. Thus, Jane Anger obtained the title of the ‘first feminist pamphleteer in England’ after the publication of Jane Anger, Her Protection for Women in 1589 which worked as a response to the publication of a series of offensive satiric pieces towards women. At the end of the 17th century, Mary Astell presented a work formed by two volumes by the title A Serious Proposal to the Ladies which set out that woman who were not interested in marriage or religious vocation should organise convents where they could teach, study and live. Despite these complaints and struggles, it was not until the Enlightenment (17th – 18th centuries) when the feminist rhetoric became a coherent movement. During this period, the reformist discourse was at the centre of European society’s predicaments as it fought 10 “homosexuality” was firstly coined. In this period, the emergence of studies that examined human sexual behaviour, this is, sexology, led to the first observations of homosexual people. Such observations brought some portion of tolerance towards them. Writings from early sexologists, such as Westphal or Richard von Krafft-Ebing, displayed a condolent judgement towards homosexuality and bisexuality. On the contrary, some intellectuals of the field labelled as abnormal and perverted concepts such as “third sex”. The research on human sexual behaviours became more notorious and the public’s curiosity increased making those who identified with certain behaviours and practices determined to learn more through magazines and presentations. In Germany, in the early 20th century (Charité, n.d.), researcher Magnus Hirschfeld founded Berlin’s Institute for Sexual Science as a means to gather more information on this discipline. The institute ended up holding the most important archive of gay cultural history in Europe. However, even though between the two World Wars Germany had a blooming gay bar scene and had established several liberal laws, during Hitler’s dictatorship, this tolerance disappeared and the library was destroyed on 1933. Concurrently, in the United States, before World War II (from now on WWII) gay life prospered in private circles, however little effort was being put in creating aid groups in support of the gay and lesbian community. The eruption of WWII meant that many soldiers from narrow-minded and isolated areas were introduced to these marginalised groups whose members were also serving in the military. This provoked homosexual individuals to be somehow tolerated in the military service, but of course privately. Not much later, around the 50s, as a consequence of the civil rights movement people started to carry out political demands on fair mental health, employment and public policy for gay men and lesbians. Notoriously, it was in 1947 when Alfred Kinsey suggested in a study that sexuality is actually a spectrum which ranges from completely homosexual to completely heterosexual. Three years later, Harry Hay and Chuck Rowland founded the Mattachine Society which would become the first organisation in support of homosexual men who suffered oppression as a consequence of being a cultural minority. In 1955, a similar organisation named Daughters of Bilitis would be launched by Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin as a support system for lesbians. These significant organisations were met with the endorsement of influential sociologists and psychologists like Donald Webster Cory who, in 1951, presented his work "The Homosexual in America" in which he identified lesbians and gay men as a legitimate minority group. 11 With the success of the civil right movement in achieving the prohibition of discrimination on the basis of race, in 1965, the first gay right marches occurred in Philadelphia and Washington D.C. Then, on the 28 of June 1969, one of the most significant moments in the liberation of the LGBTQ+ community took place: Stonewall. Stonewall was a gay bar in New York which on said night was raided by the police. This raid sparked what would become a four-night uprising against the police in which individuals of marginalised identities and sexualities fought for their freedom (Geoghegan, 2019). Stonewall would become a staple in LGBTQ+ history and would kick off a public movement for the liberation of queer people through its commemoration every June in the form of “pride marches”. All of this led to a crucial moment in 1973 when the American Psychiatric Association ceased to consider homosexuality an “illness”. Nevertheless, this progress did not transfer to everyday life where homosexual men and women were still highly stigmatised and at risk of being victims of violence or being put on conversion therapy. After that, the gay liberation movement experienced a flourishment in the political field since many political gay organisations arose. However, lesbians started to notice the lack of female leaders in this gay groups and, influenced by the second wave feminist movement, began forming their own societies, music festivals, bookstores, etc. On top of that, both movements, LGBT and feminism, united forces since they shared most of their demands. The first march for gay rights happened in Washington D.C at the end of the decade. Unfortunately, the 80s saw a major setback with the emergence of the AIDS epidemic which entailed the death of millions of people. The epidemic affected mainly homosexual and bisexual men, transgender women and black and latino men (Otten, 2022). Besides, the relation doctors and other health institutions traced between the disease and the LGBTQ+ community produced once more a strong stigma and discrimination towards the collective (Otten, 2022). Nonetheless, the epidemic also stirred up the creation of groups such as AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) and Queer Nation who demanded compassion and medical funding. In the US, the end of the 20th century inaugurated a new chapter for queer individuals as celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres “came out of the closet” on national television and gave the movement media visibility. This visibility created a space for transgender and intersex voices who required gender and women’s studies to be inclusive of transgender and non-binary identities. 12 2.2.3 The 21st century The new century came in with great legal gains for the collective with the help of the internet and online campaign networking. In the year 2000, Holland was the first country to recognise same-sex marriage followed by Belgium in 2003 and Spain in 2005 (RTVE.es, 2019). In the US, under the Vermont law same-sex civil unions were recognised in the year 2000 and state sodomy laws disappeared making homosexual people free from criminal categorisation. As for the United Kingdom, it was not until 5 years later when same-sex civil unions would become legal (EFE / EL HUFFINGTON POST, 2013). Transgender activism and discussion about gender identity became very prominent. A focus on terminology that questioned gender identification based on the binarism “woman/man” also rose and transphobia and cissexism 4 became important subjects of debate. Additionally, the arrival of the internet meant that the activist labour shifted from traditional gathering spaces, such as bars and festivals, to the online realm which provided a safe space free from boundaries that could reach vast amounts of people. The LGBTQ+ community moved towards greater inclusivity which prompted the creation of the concept of queerness. In Julia Serano’s words “queer” is “a reclaimed word that has since become a widely accepted umbrella term for gender and sexual minorities/LGBTQ+ people.” (Serano, 2015-2016). On a world-wide perspective, the community put its attention on fighting international struggles such as the illegal status homosexuality still held in many countries. Remarkable were the remarks made by Pope Francis during an interview in 2013 in which he stated: “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?” (BBC News, 2013). These words gave hope to many LGBTQ+ Catholics. Going back to the US, the biennium 2015-2016 was full of great media achievements for the LGBTQ+ collective, for instance, the Olympic champion Bruce Jenner publicly came out as transgender and started her transition to Caitlyn Jenner, the Supreme Court recognised same-sex marriage and the renowned Oscars nominated transgender and lesbian-themed movies Carol and The Danish Girl. It was also during this period, when the community increased their intersectional activism as a result of intense racial 4 “the belief or assumption that cis people’s gender identities, expressions, and embodiments are more natural and legitimate than those of trans people.” (Serano, 2015-2016) 13 confrontations and tragedies. This would make visible the junction between issues of gender identity, race, class and sexism which would be pushed even further after the attacks on the Pulse Club in Orlando. The Pulse Club shooting in Orlando, US, was a mass shooting that took place the 12th of June 2016 in the Pulse, a very well know dance club amongst LGBTQ+ individuals, in which 49 people died and more than 50 resulted wounded. At the time, it became the deadliest shooting in US history (Ray, 2022). This shooting was condemned as an undeniable hate crime against LGBTQ+ individuals. 2.3 Differentiating sex and gender As we have seen up until this point one major matter of contention that both movements have been facing for decades is the struggle with gender issues and how society heavily stands on gender binarism. However, before entering the realm of the relationship between society, language and gender, we tackle the difference between the terms sex and gender. Not clarifying these two terms could bring about misunderstandings. According to Muehlenhard & Peterson (2011), the first differentiation between the terms sex and gender was made in 1950 by John Money and his colleagues. For them, sex referred to the physical attributes of an individual and gender referred to the conduct and the psychological attributes of the person. However, from that moment on, these two concepts would present slight modifications throughout different authors and study fields. Regarding the feminist theory, one of the most important and influential works to address this differentiation, more specifically the construction of gender (Scholz, 2008), must be The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir where she famously claimed "[o]ne is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” (1949; as quoted in Butler, 1986). This statement incited a revision of the ideas that the feminist movement used to hold and, consequently, it motivated a shift in the movement. In order to better explain the difference between the terms sex and gender, the explanation given by Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell-Ginet in their book Language and Gender (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 2003, p. 10) will be used. In this book they express: Sex is a biological categorization based primarily on reproductive potential, whereas gender is the social elaboration of biological sex. Gender builds on biological sex, it exaggerates biological difference and, indeed, it carries biological difference into domains in which it is completely irrelevant. […] However, there is no obvious point at which sex leaves off and gender begins, partly because there is no single objective 14 biological criterion for male or female sex. Sex is based on a combination of anatomical, endocrinal and chromosomal features, and the selection among these criteria for sex assignment is based very much on cultural beliefs about what actually makes something male or female. Thus the very definition of the biological categories male and female, and people’s understanding of themselves and others as male or female, is ultimately social. It is clear that the necessity of differentiating people in regards of sex and gender is central to how society is constructed. So much so, that, even though there are individuals who do not present standardised genitals, this is, intersex people, there is not a clear place for them in any society. 5 As matter of fact, parents of intersexed infants are advised by doctors to put the child through surgery in order to bring them closer to one of the two categories. In addition, there are plenty of cases in which biological differences have been pointed at as the main factor for certain dissimilarities between genders. For instance, it has been widely suggested that men are more aggressive than women due to their higher levels of testosterone and that women’s bigger sensitivity is attributable to a lack of brain lateralisation, which men apparently do have making them more “rational”. However, studies about brain-based differences between both sexes are still in developing stages making nothing of what has been stated a 100% conclusive. But both the general public and scientists do not usually question such results. This perfectly shows how eager humans are in trying to reinforce the dichotomy between both categories. Now we know that gender 6 does not have a biological basis and it is nothing more than a social construct which mandates how people should behave in order to stick to society’s functioning and its standards. Nevertheless, this does not mean that gender is something that has been imposed on us, we, as individuals, also build ourselves around masculine or feminine conducts, adhering more or less our behaviour to one of the two (Connell, 2009). In itself gender is a performance and gendered performances can actually be realised by anyone. There is nothing that biologically constrains someone with a penis from wearing a skirt or a dress, likewise, no biological characteristic constrains someone with ovaries, uterus and a vulva from asking their opposite-sex partner to marry them. However, such actions are broadly applied to one or the other gender. What is more, 5 It should be noted that there are a number of societies in the world are more prone to certain kinds of intersex children and which have social categories to represent them. Nevertheless, even in such societies these people are seen as anomalous. (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 2003) 6 To read more on the history of gender studies see Raewyn Connell’s Gender in World Perspective 15 those who do not comply with the performances expected from their gender are generally perceived by society as “deviant”. Interestingly, gender performance is more constricted for men than for women. Two great examples of these are that boys are more likely to be corrected when wanting to play with socially-considered “girl toys” and that, although women are nowadays able to wear trousers, men still cannot wear skirts without their sexuality being questioned. This is known as gender asymmetry (we will elaborate on this later) and it has led to men enforcing gender differences more than women. Gender is key factor in our daily life, our world is shaped by it. It is so integrated in society that in most situations we do not even notice it. In society, gender tends to be thought of as something binary, you are either a man or a woman. Studies and literature on gender, however, have demonstrated that, in reality, gender is a “continuum of overlapping femininities and masculinities” (Motschenbacher, 2010). As Raewyn Connell (Connell, 2009) puts it, creating a gendered persona is not an easy task and it is often stroke by tensions which result in unstable outcomes like feminine men or masculine women. In her work, Connell affirms that psychological research has demonstrated that most humans present a blend of feminine and masculine attributes in varying percentages from one individual to another. To sum up, gender and sex are two terms that serve to differentiate a biological characteristics and social constructs. Although gender has been thought to have a biological basis, it is nothing more than a performance. It is central to every human’s life as the world is shaped on basis of the binarism woman/men. However, even though such binarism seems to be strict, in reality, gender is a continuum. More importantly, the men/woman binarism has entailed many struggles for women and non-binary conforming people. Such problems and their consequences will be dealt with in the following chapter. 16 3 Chapter 3. Language and gender In this chapter we will present the ways in which gender is expressed and the repercussion of gendering. In order to do so, we will firstly explain what natural gender is and how it works in English. Furthermore, we will inspect how speakers of English construct gender through different grammatical and discursive resources. And, finally, we will examine what are some of the consequences gendering has both on people who identify as women and for those gender identities who do not fall into the gender binary. 3.1 How do speakers of English express gender through language? 3.1.1 Natural gender in English Most of the world’s languages present a grammatical category by which nouns are classified known as gender. This category is used in some languages to exhibit contrast between inanimate/ animate or feminine/masculine/ neuter nouns. However, gender in languages can either be natural or grammatical. On the one hand, grammatical gender “is associated with arbitrary word classes, and signals grammatical relationships between words in a sentence” (Crystal, 1992, p. 151). A language that displays grammatical gender must have minimum two gender classes, but there can be more, and all nouns are divided among those classes. Each class can either present distinct grammatical forms or associate other words to a noun grammatically. In some grammatical languages, in order to know to which gender a noun belongs to, one might be able to guess it thanks to their form or their meaning. Yet, in most languages, this category is arbitrary making it impossible to guess the class of a noun. Furthermore, something to be noted is the fact that the gender displayed grammatically is not necessarily related to the sex of the gendered subject. (Trask, 1999, p. 100) On the other hand, some languages can exhibit natural gender which means that nouns are classified in relation to the sex of their referent (Crystal, 1992, p. 151). Even though present-day English does not mark grammatical gender, it displays a number of sexmarked nouns and pronouns like woman/man, husband/wife or he/she, which make it a natural gender language. (Trask, 1999, p. 100) In contrast with this commonly held view of the way languages deal with the representation of gender, Motschenbacher (2010) suggests that linguistics should deconstruct the grammatical vs. natural gender binarism. He states that such classification 17 is “far too simplistic to characterise the complexities of the interrelation between gender and language structure in any language” (Motschenbacher, 2010). He reproaches that , in the case of languages with grammatical gender, grammar is not the only mechanism that languages use to construct gender and, regarding languages with natural gender, they do not only use lexical processes to attribute gender, but they also resort to referential gender (this concept will be explained below). He, then, enumerates four linguistic categories that help gender construction universally: social, lexical, referential and grammatical gender. In order to fully understand how gender is formally constructed in the English language I will focus on Motschenbacher’s explanation of lexical, social and referential gender which are the three linguistic categories that English displays. Lexical gender In this category we have those personal nouns which hold the semantic meaning of ‘female’ and ‘male’ regardless of the context in which they appear. This is the case of words of the semantic field of kinship (e.g. father/mother), nobility titles (e.g. duke/duchess), terms of address (Ms./ Mr./ Miss/ Mrs.) and personal nouns that denote female or male human beings (boy/girl). In addition, there are derivational affixes which are gender specific. Consider, for instance English -ess which creates feminine derivatives of lexically masculine nouns (e.g. stewardstewardess). In regard to personal pronouns, in English most are lexically gender-neutral except for third person singular, therefore, when speakers choose to use personal nouns that are lexically gendered, they are directly and deliberately denoting gender. Moreover, this type of personal pronouns require agreement with anaphoric pronouns. Overall, lexical gender bases its differentiation of female/male on semantics, not on biology. Gender deconstruction in this linguistic category would be extremely difficult due to its firm correlation to gender binarism, as Motschenbacher (2010, p. 64) clearly describes: lexical gender is about categorising the gender continuum into two, and only two, mutually exclusive binary macro-categories ‘female’ and ‘male, and hence abstracts away from intra-gender differences. 18 Social gender This linguistic category is intimately intertwined with social stereotypes that assign certain positions to women or men. A very well-established example would be nouns such as nurse and farmer which, lexically speaking, are gender-neutral, but, socially, they are gendered. When using the word nurse, usually, English speakers would think about a woman, while, in the case of farmer, it would be thought to be referring to a man. Nevertheless, there are other instances of socially gendered nouns that are not so fixed, like doctor or teacher. Therefore, social gender is about common gender associations. What is more, some associations can be so ingrained in the collective mindset that, in order to clarify the gender of the person, explicit gender marking might be necessary (e.g. man nurse, woman doctor). Referential gender Referential gender is concerned with the particular person to whom a pronoun or personal noun refers to in a specific context. This category is very useful when personal nouns that are lexically, grammatically or socially gendered do not fully correspond with the reality that is being expressed. This is the case, for instance, of lexical or grammatical masculine nouns that are used as generics like guys, which is a masculine noun that sometimes is used to allude to mixed-sex/gender groups or all-female groups of people. In English, owing to its lack of grammatical gender, this way of gendering is necessary when a noun is lexically gender-neutral and the speaker wishes to specify if the individual is male or female. In such cases, the speaker might choose to make use of anaphoric pronouns basing their choice on referential gender (e.g. this childhe/she). To sum up, following Motschenbacher (2010) words, it should be taken into consideration that all of these categories are used in different degrees. Additionally, one word can be subject to more than one of these categories which can lead to conflicts between them (e.g. the example we have just describe above). In his words, this “representation contradicts a strictly binary model of gender”. 7 3.2 Constructing gender through language As we have stated before, gender is at the centre of our social world. It is so embedded in our society that we cannot avoid gendering in almost any situation. In the previous section, we have provided an explanation on how English formally conveys gender 7 For a more in-depth analysis of these categories see (Motschenbacher, 2010, pp. 64-88) 19 through language, however, it is also significant to understand how individuals create gendered ideologies, identities and relations in their everyday-life (Eckert & McConnell- Ginet, 2003). In their analysis of social change Eckert & McConnell-Ginet (2003) point to face-to-face interaction as the foundation of such tasks and, at the core of face-to-face interaction, we have conversations. It is through this human action that “[t]he individual connects to the social world at that nexus where we balance who we are in relation to others, and who others will allow us to be” (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 2003). By engaging in this action, individuals start shaping themselves and others in relation to our social world and an essential aspect of it is gender. Taking this into consideration, it comes as no surprise that gender and language are deeply interconnected and that human beings use language to genderise almost everything around them. Gendered verbal practices aid in the reinforcement of gender dichotomy as happens, for example, every time a teacher addresses a group of students as “girls and boys” or every time gender is taught as opposition girl/boy (gendered talk is especially prominent in schools) (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 2003). As noted by Eckert & McConnell-Ginet (2003), “language is a highly structured system of signs, or combinations of form and meaning” and gender is deeply rooted in those signs, even to the point that it can be the whole purpose of one. We can apply gender in many ways and we can do it even at times when gender has nothing to do with the topic of conversation. Furthermore, when presenting ourselves we use linguistic resources like choice of vocabulary, pitch and tone or grammatical patterns that show gendered characteristics of us. These resources can also exhibit someone’s stand on the gendered persona of an interlocutor and their analysis can help us defy or reproduce traditional concepts of masculinity and femininity. In their book, the authors display a thorough analysis on how the linguistic system helps build and reflect our social world. Nevertheless, in what follows I have chosen to highlight here some of their examples that illustrate how different linguistic levels can help in the reinforcement of gender dichotomy. Regarding phonology, even though phonemes cannot bear meaning by themselves, gender can be manifested in different realisations of a given phoneme. For example, the realisation of the phoneme /s/, in which the tip of the tongue is situated at the edge of the front teeth, is broadly associated with women as well as with homosexual men and prissiness. Moreover, according to Strand & Johnson (1996; as quoted in Eckert & 26 Gender Non-Conforming: refers to people or behaviors that defy societal gender norms. It is sometimes used as an alternative umbrella label for transgender or gender-variant people […] According to The Rainbow Project (n.d.), the latter label presents a similar dilemma as non-binarism: many gender non-conforming people identify themselves as transgender, but not all. Furthermore, writer Eris Young in his book They/Them/Their: A Guide to Nonbinary and Genderqueer Identities uses the terms genderqueer and gender non-binarism interchangeably, claiming that they are “a bit abstract” (Young, 2019). Taking all of this into consideration, I have chosen to use the terms transgender, nonbinary and genderqueer as umbrella terms and synonyms for the rest of the dissertation for commodity. Nevertheless, it should not be overlooked that these are distinct concepts and that each person is entitled to identify themselves with whatever label they feel most comfortable with. Overall, this is a very brief presentation of the main tags that people who do not conform to the conventional gender binary might use. However, each one of these labels contains many distinct and more specific terms such as intergender, demigender or the ones previously mentioned. Sadly, we cannot look into each one of them. Subsequently, now that genderqueerness has been clarified, we will return to the consequences of gendered language. 3.3.2 The consequences of gendered language for individuals who identify as women One of the main dilemmas that experts point at when discussing gender is the existence of asymmetry between males and females. As Eckert & McConnell-Ginet explain (2003), male-perceived practices are higher valued in society than female-perceived ones. This can be seen, for instance, in the fact that ‘male activities’ are sensed as appropriate for females, while ‘female activities’ are seen as only suitable for females (e.g. if a little girl is seen playing with what is commonly conceived as a ‘boy toy’ she will not be as reprimanded as if a little boy is seen playing with a ‘girl toy’). We can translate this by saying that female activities and behaviour emerge as markedas reserved for a special subset of the population – while male activities and behaviours emerge as unmarked or normal […] This asymmetry is partially a function of cultural devaluation of women and of the feminine (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 2003, p. 21) 27 Unquestionably, this asymmetry extends to the linguistic domain too. Through language the idea that masculinity is superior is reinforced. In English, for example, does this by marking the meaning ‘feminine’ or by using masculine generics (he, man(kind), etc.). For the purpose of better illustrating this, a brief examination of a language behaviours in English that support gender asymmetry will be provided. On the subject of markedness in language, we firstly shall take a look at Motschenbacher’s (2010, p. 94) description of the concept: Markedness is a tool for establishing linguistic manifestations of normative ideologies. More specifically, it is a useful concept to show whether women or men are perceived to be more prototypical members of certain social groups. Furthermore, markedness can appear in the following aspects (i); morphology (e.g. waiter-waitress), where the derivative form is the marked one. Nonetheless, there is a very interesting case, that of widow and widower, where the derivative form is not the feminine, but the masculine. In fact, in the OED (2022), it can be checked that the origin of widower is by derivation of the word widow plus the suffix -er. Going back to the aspects, morphological markedness is related to distributional markedness, which happens when the more complex form, the derivative one, shows lower distribution in comparison to the less complex as a cause of its complexity; and (ii) semantics, where one of the forms is deemed as less “specific in its referential potential” (Motschenbacher, 2010). 11 Taking all of this into consideration and according to several scholars (see, e.g., Cameron, 1992; Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 2003), the marked category in gendered language is, without a doubt, the feminine. This markedness can overtly be perceived in the use of generics. In English, we can divide generics into two groups: male-gendered and gender-neutral generics. When malegendered/false generics occur, as Eckert & McConnell-Ginet (2003) note, woman 12 “may be marked against the default background of man” and when gender-neutral generics appear, those individuals who are not part of the default category might be potentially excluded. As a matter of fact, due to the institutionalisation of the use of man as a general denomination, discursive patterns are prone to only count as generic members those individuals who are not marked. Furthermore, empirical research demonstrates that, 11 See (Motschenbacher, 2010) to learn more about the inconsistencies of “the traditional application of markedness to the description of gendered linguistic forms” 12 here referring to all linguistic forms conveying ‘female’ meaning, same with men 28 when there is a linguistic form that opposes to a another that alludes the meaning ‘feminine’ and it is used in a gender-inclusive manner, people tend to understand that the utterance is only making reference to men. On the other hand, sex-indefinite generic terms, also known as false generics, are words that do not display an explicit gendermark, but that through other genderising patterns (e.g. referential, social or lexical) express gender. These generic terms can many times be understood to be applying only to males (e.g. doctor, president) erasing the existence of women in certain spheres. Interestingly, this can also happen all the way around, there are sex-indefinite terms that can be assumed to apply only to women (e.g. nurse, cheerleader), however, in order to operate, these cases have a need for more contextual information. Overall, the use of these generics has a devastating impact in the representation and visibility of women. This might cause, in many instances, that women will be left behind or that they might not even be taken into consideration. Besides all of this, the use of language has been demonstrated to show sexist patterns in many other linguistic realms. Deborah Cameron (1992) considers that ‘sexist language’ are those linguistic behaviours that work in favour of the system that oppress women by reinforcing the inequality between men a women and their sex roles. As a matter of fact, feminists have commented on the fact that lexicon and grammar in English have many attributes that undermine, insult and omit women. As we have already dealt with grammar, now we will now examine how lexicon, particularly insults, can abuse women and what are their repercussions. Insults destined for women come in various forms: from the most apparently “sweet” ones to the most overtly aggressive. Concerning the first group, we can include terms of address such as love, dear, honey, which are usually directed towards women. At first, it might seem like there is nothing wrong with such way of addressing someone. However, it must be taken into account that those terms of address are suitable in contexts in which the interlocutor is close with the addressee. Many times, men feel like they have the right to use terms of endearment with women with whom they might not be intimate with or who are not subordinate to them. But, what does this entail? As terms of endearment tend to connote intimacy between humans, if used in a situation with a stranger they happen to turn into a manifestation of disrespectfulness and as expressed by Cameron (1992) “they are and unilateral declaration by the man that he need not trouble about the formalities expected between non-intimates”. 29 Further on this, Cameron presents stronger insults which include ‘street remarks’ and verbal violence against women. Street remarks are comments, normally unwelcomed and uncalled for, made by men aimed at women in the street. As sociologist Carol Brooks Gardner (cited in Cameron, 1992) points out, there are classes of people that are more prone to be the recipients of comments in a public setting. Gardner named these people ‘open persons’ and women are one of those classes, together with children and some disabled people. Remarkably, street remarks exhibit a double standard as women do not have the same rights to address men in the same way. These comments can have a wide variety of repercussions on women which go from feelings unsafety and danger to feelings of culpability and (sexual) objectification. With respect to verbal violence, in the lexicon of the English language, as in many others, it has been widely studied that there are more words available to insult women than men. Moreover, words that make reference to women’s bodies are seen as more of a taboo and, in some semantic fields like words that denote sexual behaviour, there are little equivalent terms between both genders (e.g. slag, bitch, nympho which are only used when referring to women). All of this is firmly connected with the idea that women should not desire sexual contact while men should be insatiable, in fact, some behaviours done my men are linguistically praised, while for women, they are condemned. This is related to Muriel Schulz’s (1975; as cited in Cameron, 1992) suggestion that, once a term became associated to women, semantic derogation took place by taking in negative and sexual connotations (e.g. tramp, bachelor/spinster). This shows “a reality in which men regard [women] as inferior and define [women] above all in terms of our sexual attributes” (Cameron, 1992). What is more, The linguistic practices we have been considering have a function over and above simply ‘reflecting cultural beliefs’ about the inferiority and sexual nature of women. […] For women, these practices create a certain reality in and of themselves: they are, in fact, a form of social control and definition. (1992, p. 109) Cameron further elaborates on the matter of social control by citing sociologist Sue Lees’ investigation on the effects of slurs on young women. In that investigation, Lees came to the conclusion that young women control their sexual behaviour and selfpresentation in order to avoid being labelled slags. Therefore, insults are used as a way to keep women in line and, most notably, women do not have a way of counterattack with the same means. 30 In conclusion, the way language uses gender and the way people use language has a very damaging and undermining effect on women’s lives and they shape women’s experience of reality. Before going ahead with the next section, the reader is invited to bear in mind that the above-mentioned ways of displaying gender asymmetry and its consequences are only a small number, in fact, there are many linguistic (and, of course, non-linguistic) behaviours that have been used for centuries to relegate, erase and penalise women. Overall, language is another active component of the cultural tendency to enhance the (fake) naturalness of the dichotomy between ‘male’ and ‘female’, so that the restrictiveness and inequality of the dichotomy can be disguised (Cameron, 1992), and to naturalise certain behaviours of both sexes by giving them an ‘innate’ property. 3.3.3 The consequences of gendered language for individuals that do not ascribe to the gender binary Transgender, non-binary or non-gender conforming individuals face a set of different consequences due to certain language usages. Consequently, in this section we will present some of those consequences. However, it should be kept in mind that non-binary and binary transgender people who wish to identify themselves and to be referred to by others with feminine nouns and pronouns might also face the above-presented consequences. Due to our dichotomous social construct of gender we tend to generalise gender identities by just considering that people are either men or women. Additionally, we are also prone to think that everybody aligns their sex with their gender. However, these generalisations can mean that a great number of gender experiences get erased from our reality through misrepresentation of self-identities or by exhibiting gender biases (Motschenbacher, 2010). This can be extremely harmful given that “[c]ategorizing oneself and others can be an important part of affirming social affiliations, of developing and cultivating a social identity” as Eckert & McConnell-Ginet (2003) accurately comment. Further to generalising gender, one can wound another person’s gender identity by attacking (purposefully or not) what Motschenbacher identifies as gender face. Motschenbacher bases this concept in Brown and Levison’s (1987) application to linguistic discussions of politeness of face, which goes back to Goffman’s concept. Based on Brown and Levison’s usage, face is “ a person’s sense of self-identity that is vulnerable to various threats in actual communication” (Motschenbacher, 2010). The concept of 31 gender face, like face, can be divided into: positive gender face and negative gender face. The former one refers to the individual’s wish to have their desired gender be accepted, acknowledged and liked by society, while negative gender face has to do with one’s freedom to practice and present their gender however they want without restrictions from anyone. Gender faces are two facets of a person which one can offend through linguistic forms. Concerning this last idea, the author introduces Butler’s (1997; as cited in Motschenbacher, 2010) (and other poststructuralist intellectuals) considerations on the idea that alluding to other people through linguistic forms is indubitably bound to wound them. To further ellaborate on this last point, according Butler’s work, she claims that although at first it might seem like speakers are free to say anything they want, they are still obliged to use linguistic categories which withhold certain historical meanings. Nevertheless, Heiko Motschenbacher also develops Butler’s work on linguistic wounding by presenting the concepts of ‘linguistic wounding1’ and ‘linguistic wounding2’. Regarding the first type of wounding, it is perceived as such by the actors of an exchange, whilst the second is concerned with the violence of naming in itself, but it is not perceived as wounding. First and second-order linguistic wounding are not two different categories, but a continuum, this means, that every time a ‘linguistic wounding1’ takes place, ‘linguistic wounding2’ is also occurs (but it does not happen the other way around). Moreover, they are both significant as both take part in normative gender construction. Overall, the consequences of this type of woundings lie on the fact that, even if they want, gender non-conforming individuals might never scape former meanings which can be used against them as a way of insulting and harming them. Noticeably, there seems to be a lack of research on how concrete linguistic forms influence non-binary people’s life experiences. However, the most salient linguistic assaults that they seem to face is misgendering, “ungendering” and “deadnaming”. According to McNamarah (2021, p. 2252) misgendering is: both the imposition of terms, honorifics, names, or pronouns at odds with a referent's gender, as well as the failure to use terms, honorifics, names, and pronouns in line with a referent's gender. Additionally, “ungendering” refers to: 32 the asymmetrical use of gendered titles, terms, or pronouns for cisgender people[ 13 ] but not for genderdiverse ones. It may also involve the deliberate use of genderneutral language where the referent explicitly identifies with a gender. (2021, p. 2253) In order to present the latter form of assualt, “deadnaming”, first we have to understand what a deadname is. Sometimes transgender people decide to drop their birthname and they give themselves a new name that better represents them. The dropped name receives the title of “deadname”. Therefore, “deadnaming” is the action of addressing a trasngender person who has decided to change their name by their previous one. Undeniably, all these acts can have great impacts on different aspects of a transgender person’s life (from here onwards I will be refering to these three acts as “misgendering”). McNamarah, in their 14 article, presents a pretty thorough description of some consequences that these attacks might produce on transgender people. They name: disrespect and disregard, embarrassment and humiliation, social subordination to cisgender individuals, deprivation of privacy and safety, dehumanisation and objectification, gender policing, epistemic injustice, diminution of autonomy, gender sadism and measurable psychological and physiological injuries. In order to avoid making this section exceedingly long, a briefly description of the most seemingly obscure effects will be given. First of all, there is “epistemic injustice” which, following Miranda Fricker’s work (2007; as cited in McNamarah, 2021), McNamarah divides into: testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. The former takes place when a person’s words are considered disingenous and/or unbelievable on the basis of their identity. As for the latter, it occurs when society conceives a situation as unintelligible owing to the fact that the person who undergoes such circumstances “does not contribute to the collective socio-epistemic structures that create shared social meaning” (McNamarah, 2021). Hermeneutical injustice can occur to genderqueer people when there is a lack of tools that represent certain gender realities on the basis of identity discrimination. Next, we have the diminution of autonomy. To choose one’s gender identity or expression is an act of autonomy, therefore, when someone misgenders another individual, they are ignoring and belittling their autonomous decision to present themselves however they choose to. 13 Cisgender people are those individuals whose gender aligns with their sex. 14 The author goes by the pronouns they/them as seen in their social media 33 Following this, there is gender sadism which refers to the feeling of satisfaction, pleasure and/or superiority when refusing to accept gender minorities as socially equal. Finally, all of the effects McNamarah lists can culminate in psychological and physiological injuries. Many studies have found that misgendering, in all its forms, can be considered a form of microaggression 15 which can cause deep harm. Some non-binary and binary transgender individuals show anxiety, feelings of apathy, hopelessness, depression and suicidal thoughts. Moreover, they might have bad self-perception and they might feel invalidated. This can lead to emotional distress, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 15 “A statement, action, or incident regarded as an instance of indirect, subtle, or unintentional discrimination or prejudice against members of a marginalized group such as a racial minority.” (OED Online, 2022) 34 4 Chapter 4. The influence of the feminist and the LGBTQ+ community movements on the English language: gender-neutral language For decades there has been an active aim to change sexist and/ or gender-excluding language practices. Probably, the best-known movements are the feminisation of language, this is, the intention to create female-gendered counterparts for all malegendered nouns, pronouns and adjectives, and gender-neutral language which foments the usage of language gender remarks. The focus of this chapter is the latter one. Therefore, we will now provide a brief history of gender-neutral language, an up-to-date definition of it and, finally, we will see some of its advantages and disadvantages. 4.1 The beginnings of gender-neutral language The origins of gender-neutral language are intimately linked with the feminist movement. During the second wave of the movement, as we have previously described, feminists were really interested in getting rid of every ounce of sexism in society, this included language. During the 70s this intention gained many adepts and more women started to speak up against sexist language. They focused, mainly, on the use of generic he and the visibility of females in different spaces by feminising certain nouns, pronouns and adjectives like, for instance, job titles (Hord, 2016). An example of this linguistic battle would be when women at Harvard University started to protest against the use of generic masculine forms used in theological discussions and, unsurprisingly, their protests were met with a considerable amount of objections by some linguists, who classified these women’s complaints as ‘pronoun envy’ (Cameron, 1992). Over the years, this struggle for changing the language would receive the name ‘feminist language reform’ or ‘feminist language planning’ and it would expand to the rest of the linguistic realms like, for instance, discourse. Gender-neutral language entered the academic field as an object of study, as noted by Hord (2016), with Dennis Baron, who was one of the first linguists to look into the history of gender-neutral language with his book Grammar and Gender published in 1986. In this body of work, among many other issues, he examines the two-hundred-year history of grammarians’ search for an epicene pronoun. Baron lists more than eighty genderneutral pronouns coming to the final conclusion that the best chance English has of having an epicene pronoun is by using singular they. However, a few years earlier, in 1980, a very significant book was published on the non-sexist language matter: Casey Miller and Kate Swift’s The Handbook of Non-sexist Writing. This guide, which was their second 35 attempt to promote non-sexist language, provided an in-depth analysis on how English communicates sexist notions and provides some tips on how to avoid such uses of language. It became, and still is to this day, the book of reference for non-sexist language and further fuelled the fight for gender-inclusive language. 4.2 The arrival of the LGBTQ+ community Although there is no marked date or period in which the LGBTQ+ community started to get enrolled in gender-inclusive language, it is true that the collective has probably been an active advocate for the language reform from its beginnings. This is due to the fact that many lesbian and bisexual women were also feminist activists. However, it was during the decade of the 1990s to 2000s when both movements collided in their entirety as women’s studies amplified their object of interest to include lesbian, gay and transgender struggles and started to be regarded as ‘gender studies’ (Connell, 2009). Further to this, during that same decade, ‘transgender’ became a more widespread identity label (Valentine, 2007 as cited in Zimman, 2017) which gave visibility to trans identities and their problems. Nevertheless, for many years, the popular belief was that all transgender people were transsexuals. Contrary to those beliefs, transexuality is a label within transgender identities, which is generally used by individuals whose transition involves medical procedures like hormones or surgery 16 (Abrams, 2019). Therefore, it could be stated that the general impression was that trangenderism only designated female-to-male or male-to-female transgender people that had gone or were going through medical procedures. There was seemingly little knowledge about individuals outside the gender binary. Non-binary people 17 probably started gaining some amount of visibility after Alex MacFarlane, an intersex person, attained the first ‘indeterminate’ passport and birth certificate in 2003 in Australia (Butler J. , 2003). However, most likely it was not until the second and third decades of the 20th century when genderqueer identities became more prevalent with many celebrities like Jaden Smith, son of Will Smith, or Demi Lovato sharing their non-binary identities with the public. With the intention of giving visibility and accomodating all gender identities, transgender individuals, and the rest of the LGBTQ+ community, started to fight for a 16 It should be reported that many transgender people find trouble with the ‘transsexual’ label as it was historically used in the fields of medicine and psychology to name transgender individuals as mentally ill or deviant. Therefore, this term should not be used to refer to a transgender person that has not made clear that they identify as such. (Abrams, 2019) 17 Here I am only alluding to people who do not identify within the female-male binary 42 people who share certain ideologies. Probably with the passing of time it will become more or more normalised. Swedish is the first language to incorporate a completely new gender-neutral pronoun in their language (Gustafsson Sendén, Bäck, & Lindqvist, 2015). Its success shows us that people do want and are willing to change their liguistic behavious in order to accommodate to other persons’ reality. Furthermore, this situation also manifests that the use of gender-neutral language can be helpful for many different fields of society. The success of hen might also serve as an example of what singular they can become and achieve in the English language. 4.5 Some problems of gender-neutral language In spite of the fact that gender-neutral language has many advantages and can motivate the visibility and inclusion of oppressed genders, it can also endanger the visibility of people who identify as women. Many intellectual feminists have pointed out that genderneutrality can sometimes invisibilise the existence and presence of women in some fields and contexts. This happens when gender neutral nouns and adjectives are socially gendered (e.g farmer and handsome). This socially gendered words can be very ingrained in a society’s mindset and whenever they are utilised they incite a mental picture in which women are not included. This, of course, also pertains transgender individuals, but feminists seem to exhibit a bigger dilemma with it as these type of words completely invisibilise their position in areas where before women did not have the right to be or were not commonly included. For instance, soldier is a non-gendered word, however, for many centuries women were not able to enroll in the military. Consequently, when somebody utters the word soldier without an explicit allusion to their gender, it might evoke a mental image in which the referred person is a man. This completely erases the presence and existence of women in the military sector. To further delve into this issue, in 2012, Prewitt-Freilino et. al. conducted an study comparing how gender equality varied from countries which use gendered, natural and genderless languages (Prewitt-Freilino, Caswell, & Laakso, 2012). In this study, Prewitt- Freilino found evidence that demonstrates that countries where natural and genderless languages are spoken exhibit higher gender equality between men and women than countries with gendered languages. Further to that, countries with natural gender languages seem to be slightly more gender equal than those with a genderless language. Prewitt-Freilino et al. suggest that this could be due to the ability that natural languages 43 have to create new words which would help produce symmetrical terms that visibilise women. Besides, unlike grammatically gendered languages, natural gender languages “do not depend upon gendered structures that would limit the legibility or intelligibility of symmetrical revisions” (Prewitt-Freilino, Caswell, & Laakso, 2012). In regards to genderless languages, Prewitt-Freilino et. al. make reference to Stahlberg et. al. (2007) who indicate that, even though such languages are thought to be more gender neutral or fair than languages with grammatical or natural gender, studies have demonstrated that gender neutral terms can still be decoded by the audience in a gender-biased way. In their review, conducted an investigation on gender neutral terms in Spanish, English, Turkish and German which served as alternatives of masculine generics. In such investigation, the results proved that those terms still continue to connote a male bias, while, in situations when gender symmetrical versions (e.g. “he or she”) were used, a bigger inclusion of women was promoted. Prewitt-Freilino et. al (2012, pp. 278-279) further elaborate on the topic by saying: genderless languages [..] can include seemingly gender neutral terms that in fact connote a male bias (just as natural and gendered languages), but because they do not possess grammatical gender, it is not possible to use female pronouns or nouns to “emphasize women’s presence in the world,” which could mean “androcentricity in a genderless language may even increase the lexical, semantic and conceptual invisibility of women” (Engelberg 2002, p.128). This further proves and supports the idea that some gender-neutral words can still carry gender biases that could have damaging repercussions for the visibility of women. 44 5 Chapter 5. Empirical analysis: actor, police officer and firefighter 5.1 Introduction This chapter is devoted to a practical analysis in which I will explore whether the use of the gender-neutral nouns actor, police officer and firefighter has changed in relation to their male/female-gendered counterparts over the last thirty years (from 1990 until 2019). 5.2 Methodology For my purposes I have chosen the nouns actor, police officer and firefighter and the gendered equivalents of the latter two policeman/woman and fireman/woman. These terms were selected for various reasons. As for actor, it presents a unique case since, even though it does have a female equivalent (actress), in recent years there has been a shift in the entertainment industry towards the use of the male form as a gender-inclusive form used to refer to any gender. Therefore, it would be interesting to examine whether there has been an increase in the use of actor with reference to females. Concerning police officer and firefighter, these are two job titles of two labour fields that have predominantly been attributed to men as they require physical characteristics, such as strength or muscled bodies, which are widely ascribed to “manly” men. This belief has motivated that for many years people who were part of the fire department were regarded as firemen and people in the police office as policemen. However, in the last few years, these forces have been actively trying to recruit more women (e.g. How to recruit more female officers, n.d.; Aziz, 2022) and more women have been applying to such jobs (e.g. College of policing, 2021). This has prompted the use of gender-neutral job titles as well as the arousal of feminine forms (police-woman and firewoman). Further to this, job titles have been a controversial issue for the feminist movement for decades (see Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 2013). Consequently, it would be interesting to see if there has been a rise in the use of the gender-neutral forms and if these appear with female referents. Furthermore, I will explore whether the rise of the gender-neutral terms has happened hand-in-hand with a decrease in the use of the male/female-gendered forms. Overall, this could indicate whether the influence of the LGBTQ+ and feminist movements on the use of gender-inclusive language has had any real effects. This empirical study is based on dictionary evidence (OED) as well as corpus data (COCA and GoogleBooks). In what follows, I will briefly describe the three sources of data. 45 The Oxford English Dictionary is regarded as the “authority of the English language” (Oxford University Press, n.d.). It originated 150 years ago and, at present, it contains 600.000 words. Its uniqueness stems from the fact that it not only contains the current meanings of words, but it also displays their whole history, from their first written appearance and origin to their current form “traced through 3 million quotations” (Oxford University Press, n.d.) extracted from all types of texts. Moreover, the OED also provides the pronunciation in different accents of the words. (Oxford University Press, n.d.). Regarding the three nouns under analysis, the OED will be used to check whether there is any significant information about their history and/or meaning. Secondly, I will use the COCA corpus (Davies, 2008-), a corpus of Contemporary American English which contains data from 1990 to the present day. Nowadays, COCA is composed of more than one billion words and a wide range of genres that go from transcripts of conversations to subtitles of television and movies and including academic texts. Moreover, this corpus contains 20 million words from every year between 1990 and 2019. These characteristics permit the retrieval of relevant data on “the frequency of words, phrases and grammatical constructions” throughout several genres and years (COCA Corpus, 2020). I will use the corpus to check the frequency of the nouns, as well as their collocation with female referents. In order to examine the use of gender-neutral words applied to female referents, I will conduct an examination of collocates 21 , 22 . According to the Collins Dictionary (Collins Cobuild, 2001), “[i]n linguistics, a collocate of a particular word is another word which often occurs with that word.” The analysis of collocates is relevant as it can tell us how often a word appears with other linguistic expressions. In order to do this, I have searched for the personal pronouns he/she in a window of four words before and after the search item. I have divided the searches in three decades (1990 to 1999, 2000 to 2009 and 2010 to 2019) so as to explore whether there has been a change over time. In the analysis of collocates, I have proceeded to discard false positives, this is, instances, for example, where the feminine pronoun appears close to the word, but it is not the referent of the 21 Concerning the results of the collocates, COCA, in its general-overview page of the results, shows one number which does not coincide with the number of results one can find in the “Context” page (this last one is always higher). Therefore, I have chosen to insert in the different tables the number of the “Context” page. 22 As will be seen there are some results on the table that will not add up to the “Frequency” number. This due to the fact that, in COCA, there are some contexts which do not appear in the list, but the engine counts them as if they were there. 46 noun (e.g. she told the actor to stop smoking). Finally, after eliminating all false positives, I have examined if there has been and increase or decrease in the application of the gender-inclusive words to women. The data obtained from the corpus have been complemented with data from Ngram Viewer (Michel, et al., 2010) in order to see the evolution in the use of the gender-neutral and male-gendered (therefore, actor will not be an object of examination) terms in the last 59 years (1960-2019). Ngram Viewer is a tool belonging to Google Books that shows a graph which displays “how those phrases [expressions or words] have occurred in a corpus of books (e.g., "British English", "English Fiction", "French") over the selected years” (Google Ngram Viewer Team, n.d.). The Ngram Viewer corpora consist of books of various genres from American and British English as well as books written in English but published in other countries. Additionally, the corpora also have books written in other languages like Spanish, French or German, but these are not relevant for our research. In this tool, I have settled the settings to show me the trends of the English corpus of 2019, which consists of books in English published in any country, between the aforementioned years. In the following section I will deal with each of the nouns in detail. 5.2.1 Actor The OED provides many definitions for actor, but the one we are interested in is the fourth sense, which states the following: A person who acts a part on stage or (in later use also) in a film, on television, etc.; a dramatic performer, a player. Frequently in figurative context. Also in extended use: a person who behaves in a theatrical manner; a person skilled in dissimulation. (OED Online, 2022) As can be perceived, the definition keeps gender-inclusive terminology which means that this term can be used to refer to any gender. Nevertheless, the online version shows a small entry beneath the definition which indicates “[o]n the use of actor with reference to a female performer, see note at actress n. 2a.” sending us to the online page of the word actress. If we click on the link, one can encounter the definition of said word which almost fully replicates that of actor, but with the specification that actress is used only when the person is a woman. Additionally, underneath the definition the authors of the dictionary further explain: 47 Women did not appear on stage in public in England until after the Restoration of 1660, following which the terms actor and actress were both used to describe female performers. Later, actor was often restricted to men, with actress as the usual term for women. Although actress remains in general use, actor is increasingly preferred for performers of both sexes as a gender-neutral term. (OED Online, 2022) For the noun actor I will be only analysing examples in which the term collocates with he/she in the context. The table below illustrates the results of the analysis: Years Words Frequency False positives with she True positives with she Other uses 1990-1999 He 661 She 79 53 20 6 2000-2009 He 713 She 93 45 32 14 2010-2019 He 1203 She 192 77 95 14 Table 1. Third person singular pronouns collocating with the noun actor As we can see in the given results, overall, there are way more results with the masculine pronoun than with the feminine. Between 1990 and 1999, of the 79 feminine collocates 53 were false positives, 20 actually showed that the referent of actor was a woman and 6 exhibited a generic use of the word or the context was not enough to affirm whether the referent was male or female. Concerning the subsequent decade, it can be seen that the results of the feminine pronoun, present a decrease in the number false positives, whilst the number of true positives goes up to 32. In addition, the section “Other uses” showcases a growth of more than the double. Finally, in the last analysed decade, both frequencies increase again with she displaying an increase of almost 100 more results. Interestingly, 95 of the 192 results are true positives staying above the number of false positives. 48 In COCA’s section of “Contexts” some examples of false and true positive together with the “others uses” can be found, as illustrated in examples (1) to (3) (1) Dick-T ROSE: (Voiceover) She is also an actor, whose roles are often reflective of her own image (1990s). In the section of the 1990s, we firstly encounter an example extracted from CBS program “60 minutes” about Madonna. As can be seen, here we have a case of a true positive, as the pronoun she refers to the word actor. (2) illustrates a false positive: (2) including her long-time lover, who was at her side when she died, actor Ryan O'Neal. Tonight, we want to celebrate the life, the loves,” (2000s). In this case, the pronoun appears close to the noun, nevertheless, actor here refers to Ryan O'Neal, a male actor, and she makes reference to Farrah Fawcett, a female actor. Interestingly, if we go the amplified version of the contexts we can notice that, in the program where this citation has been extracted, they refer to her as an actress. Concerning other usages, in the las time period, we have an example of fiction: (3) “there on the sofa in the evenings, exclaiming in surprise when she saw an actor she knew in a movie or a show, she would not fall asleep there” (2010s). As can be observed, she is not referring to actor. If we go to check the amplified version of this small extract it can be verified that the gender of the actor is not disclosed at any point and there is no reference to anything that might signal their gender. Figure 1. Evolution of actor's feminine collocates 0 20 40 60 80 100 1990-1999 2000-2009 2010-2019 Evolution actor's feminine collocates Ocurrences with femine referents 49 The growing frequency of female referents with the noun actor can be seen in Figure 1. Altogether, the results we have gathered for the use of actor demonstrate that the reception of the term as gender-inclusive/genderless form has been tolerated. As the evolution graph (Figure 2) presents, the significant change in the use of actor to refer to women took place between 2010 and 2019. In this period the usage of actor with female referents increased by 63 more occurrences than the previous decade. What is more, the fact that the explanation about the use of actor for both males and females has reached the OED, further supports my claim and the COCA results. On another note, the success of the gender-inclusive use of actor could be attributable to the Internet and social media. The greatest increase of female actor coincides with the beginning of the fourth feminist wave which, as seen in section 2.1.5, finds its most important accomplice on the Internet. Further to this, actors have been great allies and open members of both the LGBTQ+ and feminist movements and their status as celebrities has facilitated the spread of their inclusive discourses. 5.2.2 Police officer This compound word does not show anything of great interest regarding its definition in the OED other than the fact that it is defined in a gender-neutral way. However, something that might grab one’s attention is the fact that while policeman has its own entry in the dictionary, police-woman and police officer do not. Both of these job titles can be found as compounds of the noun police in the dictionary. Furthermore, the word police-woman does not exhibit a definition per se, the OED only clarifies that it is a noun. Interestingly, the definition, of policeman reads as follows: “A member of a police force; a (male) police officer” (OED Online, 2022; emphasis mine). With reference to the occurrences of the words police officer, policeman and policewoman per million words, COCA exhibits considerably different results for each noun. Regarding the male-gendered word, its use has steadily decreased over time from 17.72 to 6.56¸ as can be seen in Figure 2. Figure 3 shows the results for police-woman were one interesting aspect can be perceived: this word exhibits very low results all along the six periods. What is more, the use of police-woman displays a constant decrease from 1990 until 2004, but between 2005 and 2009 an increase of 0.16 points takes places. Nevertheless, this slight increase is followed by another steady decrease which ends in the lowest frequency of the word at 0.23. Finally, in Figure 4 we can see the result for the 50 gender-neutral term police officer. This compound exhibits pretty uniform results from 1990 until 2014 ranging from a maximum of 23.42 to a minimum of 19.62. Nonetheless, in the last five-year period the frequency greatly rises up to 42.89. Figure 2. Frequency policeman Figure 3. Frequency police-woman Figure 4. Frequency police officer On the subject of collocates, police officer presents way less results than actor, however in all periods the number of he collocates is way higher than the ones for she. As one can see in Table 2, she, from 1990 to 1999, exhibits a total of 42 results of which 15 are true positives. However, in contrast with actor, from 2000 to 2009, the table shows a decrease in the number of occurrences with the feminine pronoun, 30, but this is not the case with the masculine pronoun, 161. Regarding true positives in the same time period, as expected, the number also slightly drops to 12. Lastly, during the last decade, the 51 frequency digit goes up again staying at 82 and so do the true positives which altogether add a total of 25. Years Words Frequency False positives with she True positives with she Other uses 1990-1999 He 157 She 42 9 15 14 2000-2009 He 161 She 30 10 12 7 2010-2019 He 336 She 82 19 25 35 Table 2. Third person singular pronouns collocating with the noun police officer Before continuing with the next section, I would like to draw attention to the numbers in the “Other use” column of this compound. This column, as I have already explained before, is made up of generic uses and those occurrences where the gender of the referent has not been disclosed or it is not clear. While the numbers of this category are not that relevant in the other gender-neutral words, police officer showcases a significant amount of these instances, especially between 2010 and 2019 (35). In (1) to (3), examples of the he/she collocates with the word police officer can be found. (1) exhibits a case of a false positive: (1) “voice-over) Lisa Michelle said that in 1991 she had been stalked by a police officer. She said she was able to keep him away from her until the night” (1990s). In this example it can be seen that the feminine pronoun refers to Lisa Michelle and not to police officer. As a matter of fact, in the next phrase we have the third person singular masculine pronoun him which is used to refer back to police officer clarifying the gender of the person. Then, in the next time period, we have this example of a true positive: 58 Figure 12. Evolution graph firefighter vs. fireman Concerning the OED search results of the words firefighter and its feminine and masculine counterparts not much can be said. It can be claimed that there seems to be a gender bias given that firewoman does not have its own entry and the definition is somewhat weak in comparison to the other two terms. What is more, in contrast with police officer, firefighter does have its own entry, nevertheless it is a compound that is graphically written as one unified word. In regard to the frequency of the words, the occurrences of firewoman are very low all throughout the decades which demonstrates the little success the feminisation of this job title has had. As for fireman and firefighter, both show, in COCA and Ngram Viewer, an increase in the same time period, 2000-2004. This coincidence could be due to external causes, as we have just seen in the case of police officer, given that both rapid growths are followed by drastic declines. Nevertheless, as COCA shows firefighter’s increase is way more notable and it might be linked to the 1990s feminist language revolution. Additionally, during the same time-period, we also have the incorporation of queer studies which changed the society’s view of gender and joined the language reform. Although these circumstances happened the preceding decade, probably their consequences did not materialise until the arrival of the new century. Thus, the steady decline on the use of fireman and the slow growth of firefighter might also back this claim up. Lastly, in the book realm, as Ngram Viewer shows both terms seem to be used in the same rate nowadays. 59 On the topic of collocates, firefighter only displays one significant result: the evolution from 0 to 8 in the number of occurrences with the feminine pronoun. This result shows its application to female referents has most likely been successful. However, another point worth commenting is the little success it seems to have had as generic term in comparison to police officer. Yet, this last comment might be debunked if the occurrences with the he collocates are analysed too. 5.2.4 Overall discussion of the results Overall, these results showcase that the feminist and LGBTQ+ language reforms have been to some extent successful. However, the way this success is displayed varies from one form to the other. Whilst words like firefighter and actor have shown, one more than the other, a palpable grow in its use with female referents, police officer seems to have thrived in the genderless realm. However, it cannot be ignored that the numbers of the male referents with the gender-neutral terms are still way higher than the female ones. In the case of police officer and firefighter this result could be a consequence of them still being male-dominant fields. Nevertheless, this only goes to show that there still is a long way to go. The language reform is not the only necessary tool to get rid of sexism and transphobia, there also needs to be a reform in society and its beliefs. Lastly, I would like to comment on the fact that this small corpus study has only been able to analyse the results on inclusive gender language pertaining women’s visibility. I have not checked whether some contexts could be referring to transgender individuals, nonetheless, I believe that the huge differences in numbers between feminised and gender-neutral job titles is also remarkable. Besides, the fact that masculine collocates were not examined could have prevented us from discovering more relevant results. Therefore, this could be a great subject of research for any further investigation. 60 6 Conclusion The initial aim of this dissertation was to explore the relationship of the LGBTQ+ and feminist movements and the expansion of the use, in English, of gender-neutral or genderinclusive language. In addition, it was considered fitting to carry out a study on the connection between language and gender and its repercussions on women and non-binary individuals together with a discussion on society’s possible need for gender-neutral language. Lastly, for the purpose of verifying the influence of both movements on the utilisation of gender-neutral language in English, a corpus work on the use of three gender-inclusive terms was executed. The research on the aforementioned topics has proved to be of great value to deepen the understanding on the origins and need for gender-inclusive language. The first chapter of this dissertation provided us with an overview of the origins and goals of the LGBTQ+ community and the feminist movement. This outline also presented the predicaments both communities faced and their relationship with society’s beliefs on gender. This led us to the explanation of the difference between sex and gender which highlighted the fact that gender is a performance and not something innate linked to one’s sex. Overall, this initial segment contributed to the reinforcement of our general understanding of the basic concepts of the dissertation. The relation between gender and language dealt with in chapter 3 demonstrated that gender is heavily entrenched in our view and understanding of our social world. In addition, language is a tool that helps humans describe and create their reality (Neser, 2018) and, as social beings, humans use language to communicate, construct and get involved in the social world. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the gender construct is also profoundly assimilated in language. Consequently, this section of the chapter also showcased how gender can be conveyed at different linguistic levels. The next section presented an explanation of the notion of gender binarism and an overview of those gender identities that do not ascribe to it. This served as a great ground for the next segment on the consequences of gendering. The investigation on this matter confirmed that language can be very damaging not only for women, but also for transgender people, serving as support to the feminist and transgender claim that language is harmful and can prompt the erasure of certain groups of society. After this compilation of relevant information, Chapter 4 approaches the main subject of this dissertation: gender-neutral language and its relationship with the LGBTQ+ and 61 feminist movements. It starts by giving a summary on the history of gender-inclusive language which unquestionably situates its origins during the third wave of the feminist movement and the arousal of queer studies. After taking a view to the past, research on the current state of gender-neutral language demonstrated that in the last decade different significant organisations, like the European Union or Harvard University, have been making active efforts to foment its use. The objective behind this encouragement seems to be that these organisations seek a more inclusive work environment. Thus, this evidences that the efforts of the aforesaid movements have been prosperous. In spite of everything, it is known that some people are still cautious about the use of gender-neutral language. For this reason, in this chapter a discussion on the necessity for its use was given. Such discussion, with support of a number of investigations, proved that genderneutral language is a necessary and helpful tool that avoids many situations were gendering could be detrimental. In spite of this, it should taken into consideration that gender-inclusive language can still rouse some challenges for women’s visibility. Lastly, the empirical study in chapter 5 corroborated that the usage of gender-neutral language has increase and its expansion has reached many sectors of society. Moreover, the growth on the frequency of gender-neutral terms coincides with the start of the feminist and transgender language reform. Thus, it could be stated, although to a small degree owing to the size of the search, that the feminist and LGBTQ+ community have had an active influence on the English language with the introduction of gender-inclusive language. To sum up, this thorough research has attested that the origins of gender-neutral language go back to the feminist and LGBTQ+ community and that both movements have successfully promoted its utilisation. Furthermore, it has served as a confirmation that gender-inclusive language can be beneficial not only to oppressed genders, but also as society as a whole. Further research on this topic should aim to further explore the LGBTQ+ realm by trying to delve into how gendering can affect transgender individuals and whether the use of gender-neutral language has been of assistance for their situation. Moreover, a larger research needs to be realised on the active use speakers do in their quotidian life of genderneutral expressions. This would be of great value as it would show if the efforts being made by the aforesaid movements are reaching the popular domain. Furthermore, more investigations need to be conducted on whether the use of gender-neutral language is 62 beneficial for everyone and how it comes to be favourable. Finally, I would like to point out a big obstacle which I encountered while investigating for this dissertation. There seems to be a great void on the research and linguistic theories on transgender individuals. Most of the linguistic information I was able to gather focused solely on women or started with both women and transgender people and finished forgetting completely about the second group. This has made it very difficult to fully grasp how necessary or unnecessary gender-neutral language is for them and how linguistic gendering can affect them. 63 References Abrams, M. (2019, November 21). Is There a Difference Between Being Transgender and Transsexual? Retrieved from healthline: https://www.healthline.com/health/transgender/difference-between-transgender- and-transsexual Asklöv, E. (2022, June 2). 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