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<p>In everyday life women are exposed to sexist language. Terms and usages that exclude or discriminate women are referred to as sexist language. This takes into account that one presumes that maleness is the standard, the norm, and that femaleness is the non-standard, or the exception. The aim of this paper was to find whether gratuitous modifiers such as <em>girl, lady, female </em>and <em>woman </em>are used more frequently than the male markings and whether <em>girl </em>is used to a wider extent than <em>boy</em> to denote an adult. The aim includes two aspects of sexist language. Firstly, the aspect of calling women <em>girls</em> and men <em>men</em>, called non-parallel treatment. Secondly, the fact that it is more common for unmarked terms to refer to males while when referring to females a marked term is needed. As primary source for the study the Time Corpus was used, which is an online corpus containing over 100 million words and ranges from 1923-2007. The conclusion of this essay was that the female sex is more commonly marked and that <em>woman/women</em> are the most commonly used premodifiers. Gender markings most likely apply to occupations and labels which are thought of as either typically male or female. Furthermore, it was found that <em>girl </em>was used to a wider extent than <em>boy</em> to denote an adult. In addition, the results presented a possible change of trends where <em>girl</em> referred to a child to a larger extent in contemporary English.</p>

We provide a qualitative analysis of resistance to calls for gender-neutral language. We analyzed more than 900 comments responding to two essays—one on AlterNet and another on Vox posted to the Vox editor’s Facebook page—that critiqued a pervasive male-based generic, “you guys.” Five rhetorics of resistance are discussed: appeals to origins, appeals to linguistic authority, appeals to aesthetics, appeals to intentionality and inclusivity, and appeals to women and feminist authorities. These rhetorics justified “you guys” as a nonsexist term, thereby allowing commenters to continue using it without compromising their moral identities as liberals or feminists. In addition to resisting an analysis that linked their use of “you guys” to social harms, commenters positioned the authors who called for true generics as unreasonable, divisive, and authoritarian. We conclude with suggestions for how feminists can challenge the status quo and promote social change.

TITLE: The Generic Masculine in Educational Communication ABSTRACT: The thesis deals with the use of generic masculine in educational communication. The use of masculine nouns to refer to a group of people of both sexes is a target of frequent criticism from proponents of gender-neutral language. The theoretical part of my paper discusses and explains in general the importance of language for cognitive development of an individual and the principle of gender-sensitive expression. The empirical part of my paper is based on qualitative research that was conducted at a selected secondary school in order to verify the influence of language attributions of the generic masculine form on the mental representation of reality. The main technique of data collection was a survey inspired by the psycholinguistics association experiments. Attitudes and opinions of students on the subject of research were identified during group discussions. The results of my study among respondents points at the generic masculine to be significantly more often associated with mental representation of a male than to be perceived as gender-neutral. These findings thus correspond with some of the current theses of gender linguistics.

<p>Abstract</p><p>In English usages such as mankind and job titles ending in -man (fireman, chairman) when referring to people in general are considered sexist. Sexist language makes a distinction between women and men and it can exclude, trivialize or diminish women. Therefore, the aim of this paper was to study the sexist or non-sexist use of occupational terms in The San Diego Union Tribune and The Daily Aztec. The questions that were investigated were how the newspapers used affixed terms ending in –man and -woman, if they added female/woman/lady to refer to women, but also how they referred to traditional female professions (nurse, midwife). The study was conducted by hand by using a textual analysis, which was both qualitative and quantitative in nature. The study showed that the newspapers primarily use non-sexist occupational terms and avoid using female markings, even when reference is being made to women who have traditional male professions. The sexist usage that was most common was the affixed terms ending in –man and –woman. One conclusion that could be drawn was that The San Diego Union Tribune follows The Associated Press Stylebook’s policy about the usage of coined words such as chairperson and spokesperson.</p>

In everyday life women are exposed to sexist language. Terms and usages that exclude or discriminate women are referred to as sexist language. This takes into account that one presumes that maleness is the standard, the norm, and that femaleness is the non-standard, or the exception. The aim of this paper was to find whether gratuitous modifiers such as girl, lady, female and woman are used more frequently than the male markings and whether girl is used to a wider extent than boy to denote an adult. The aim includes two aspects of sexist language. Firstly, the aspect of calling women girls and men men, called non-parallel treatment. Secondly, the fact that it is more common for unmarked terms to refer to males while when referring to females a marked term is needed. As primary source for the study the Time Corpus was used, which is an online corpus containing over 100 million words and ranges from 1923-2007. The conclusion of this essay was that the female sex is more commonly marked and that woman/women are the most commonly used premodifiers. Gender markings most likely apply to occupations and labels which are thought of as either typically male or female. Furthermore, it was found that girl was used to a wider extent than boy to denote an adult. In addition, the results presented a possible change of trends where girl referred to a child to a larger extent in contemporary English.

Abstract In English usages such as mankind and job titles ending in -man (fireman, chairman) when referring to people in general are considered sexist. Sexist language makes a distinction between women and men and it can exclude, trivialize or diminish women. Therefore, the aim of this paper was to study the sexist or non-sexist use of occupational terms in The San Diego Union Tribune and The Daily Aztec. The questions that were investigated were how the newspapers used affixed terms ending in –man and -woman, if they added female/woman/lady to refer to women, but also how they referred to traditional female professions (nurse, midwife). The study was conducted by hand by using a textual analysis, which was both qualitative and quantitative in nature. The study showed that the newspapers primarily use non-sexist occupational terms and avoid using female markings, even when reference is being made to women who have traditional male professions. The sexist usage that was most common was the affixed terms ending in –man and –woman. One conclusion that could be drawn was that The San Diego Union Tribune follows The Associated Press Stylebook’s policy about the usage of coined words such as chairperson and spokesperson.

This thesis studies Italian journalists' perceptions and experiences of the use of gendered language in the representation of women in the Italian press. Previous research has shown that Italian media misrepresent women by producing gender stereotypes. This is, to a certain extent, related to language: Italian is considered to be a gender language, meaning that every noun, pronoun and adjective have a gender. The research questions that guide this study are: what are the Italian journalists' perceptions and experiences of gender in the articles they write?  What is the place and role of language in the journalists' evaluation of gender equality in news? What are the reasons behind the journalists' use of language when they write a piece about a woman? Using an ethnographic approach, 9 semi-structured interviews were conducted and analysed following the journalistic culture perspective proposed by Hanitzsch (2007). The results show that there are many different approaches to gender, from the one suggesting to neglect gender as a category at all in the news production, to the one that sees gender as a category that is newsworthy as such and a starting point for an article. Also the role of language is interpreted in very different ways. On one side there is the idea that, compared to the gender gap being a broader social problem, language is secondary; on the other, language is considered to be able to drive a change in the society. Finally, also the reasons behind the journalists' use of language are diverse: the ethical codes do not apply to all the journalists or reveal a lack of guidelines that oblige journalists to rely on their morality, gender sensitivity, or interest to the topic of gender equality; or on the newspaper's own guidelines. The readers' assumed expectations, as well as the kind of journalism (with its requests in terms of time and space) influence the use of language with regard to gender equality. The results show also that, beside some context-dependent elements, which make Italy a specific case, there are some universal considerations that can be made. In particular, basing on these universal elements, the addition of a linguistic dimension to journalistic cultures (Hanitzsch, 2007) is suggested. In this dimension, it will be proposed to include two levels: the influence of language on social reality and the influence of journalism on language.

As people become aware that society treats women unfairly, they also perceive related shortcomings in the way that Modern English references women. For example, many have objected to the so-called generic he, the third-person masculine pronoun employed to refer to a person of unknown gender, and provided several alternatives, few of which have been widely adopted. Nonetheless, change is evident in the case of they becoming an increasingly common solution to refer to a person of unidentified gender. The intentional reform of the Modern English language, both in the past and present, has been a result of people's reactions to what is often perceived as a bias or a deficiency with what is possible to say given the words at their disposal. The rhetorical significance of reform is profound, and scholars continually broach the subject from the perspective of different disciplines. Explored here are the approaches of three of those fields, feminism, linguistics, and rhetoric; how each reacts to and even influences reform is an important part of the study. What is evident is that, regardless of the particular field, reform remains a force of change, even while it may not be broadly recognized. Further, traditional grammatical rules provide an insufficient means for tackling inequalities in Modern English, and are in part responsible for such imbalance. As such, writers must be aware of the present expectations of their audience and the situation of particular words.

In English the personal pronouns are morphologically marked for grammatical number, whilst the third-person singular pronouns are also obligatorily marked for gender. As a result, the use of any singular animate antecedent coindexed with a third-person pronoun forces a choice between he and she, whether or not the biological sex of the intended referent is known. This forced choice of gender, and the corresponding lack of a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun where gender is not formally marked, is the primary focus of this thesis. I compare and contrast the use of the two main candidates for epicene status, singular they and generic he, which are found consistently opposed in the wider literature. Using corpus-based methods I analyse current epicene usage in written British English, and investigate which epicene pronouns are given to language-acquiring children in their L1 input. I also consider current prescriptions on epicene usage in grammar texts published post-2000 and investigate whether there is any evidence that language-external factors impact upon epicene choice. The synthesis of my findings with the wider literature on epicene pronouns leads me to the conclusion that, despite the restrictions imposed on the written pronoun paradigm evident in grammatical prescriptivism, singular they is the epicene pronoun of British English.