Gender and evaluation in contemporary American English: A corpus study based on pronominal and nominal expressions with male and female reference

Abstract

Abstract This study of contemporary American English examines how males and females are evaluated in terms of their personality, physical appearance, societal importance, etc. across various registers. In this study, evaluation is defined as an expression of a speaker or writer’s attitude toward, viewpoint on, or feelings about a male or female referent, which generally carries a positive or a negative meaning. The evaluative tokens analyzed in the study include noun phrases (e.g., a real jerk) and adjectival modification (e.g., congenial) co-occurring with gender-specific nominal expressions (e.g., boy, lady) or pronominal expressions (e.g., he, she). The findings imply a distinct gender patterning in the evaluation: whereas males are evaluated in terms of their skills, abilities, acuities and importance in society, females are typically assessed in terms of their looks and appearance. Males occupy considerably more evaluative space than females, particularly in the Newspaper register. The preponderance of the evaluation of males even in twenty-first-century American English is surprising, considering changes in gender role attitudes in U.S. society in recent decades.