The masculine bias in fully gendered languages and ways to avoid it: A study on gender neutral forms in Québec and Swiss French

IF 0.6 3区 文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS
Jonathan Kim, Sarah Angst, Pascal Gygax, Ute Gabriel, Sandrine Zufferey
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

The extent to which gender neutral and gendered nouns impact differently upon native French speakers’ gender representations was examined through a yes-no forced choice task. Swiss (Experiment 1) and Québec (Experiment 2) French-speaking participants were presented with word pairs composed of a gendered first name (e.g., Thomas) and a role (e.g., doctor), and tasked to indicate whether they believed that [first name] could be one of the [role]. Roles varied according to gender stereotypicality (feminine, masculine, non-stereotyped), and were either in a plural masculine (interpretable as generic) or gender neutral (epicenes and group nouns) form. The results indicated that the use of gender neutral forms of roles avoided a strong male bias found for the masculine forms, and that both gender neutral and masculine forms used equal cognitive resources. Further, stereotype effects associated with both gender-neutral and grammatically masculine forms were quite small (<1%). These results were highly reliable across both Swiss French and Québec speakers. Our study suggests that gender neutral forms are strong alternatives to the use of the masculine form as default value.

完全性别化语言中的男性偏见及其避免方法:对quassembec和瑞士法语中性语形式的研究
性别中性名词和性别化名词对法语母语者性别表征的不同影响程度通过是-否强制选择任务进行了检验。瑞士人(实验1)和qusamubec人(实验2)讲法语的参与者看到了由性别名(例如,Thomas)和角色(例如,医生)组成的单词对,并被要求指出他们是否认为[名字]可能是[角色]之一。角色根据性别刻板印象(女性,男性,非刻板印象)而变化,并且要么是复数的男性(可解释为一般),要么是中性的(epicene和群名词)形式。结果表明,中性角色的使用避免了男性角色中存在的强烈的男性偏见,中性角色和男性角色使用了相同的认知资源。此外,性别中立和语法上的男性化形式的刻板印象效应都非常小(1%)。这些结果在讲瑞士法语和quamesbec的人群中都是高度可靠的。我们的研究表明,中性形式是使用男性形式作为默认值的有力替代品。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
1.40
自引率
16.70%
发文量
37
期刊介绍: Journal of French Language Studies, sponsored by the Association for French Language Studies, encourages and promotes theoretical, descriptive and applied studies of all aspects of the French language. The journal brings together research from the English- and French-speaking traditions, publishing significant work on French phonology, morphology, syntax, lexis and semantics, sociolinguistics and variation studies. Most work is synchronic in orientation, but historical and comparative items are also included. Studies of the acquisition of the French language, where these take due account of current theory in linguistics and applied linguistics, are also published.
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