Dead, but Won’t Lie Down? Grammatical Gender among Norwegians

Abstract

This paper examines grammatical gender from the sociolinguistic perspective. The question pursued is to what extent exponents of grammatical gender are tied indexically to identity categories. Building on literature and corpus data, I claim that within the Norwegian context, grammatical gender is associated with sociolinguistic dimensions such as the urban/rural distinction, political views, class, ethnicity. The traditional three-gender system is being replaced by a two-gender system in several dialects, resulting in the loss of the feminine gender. Indexical values associated with the feminine gender features are still valid, though, and some forms take on new pragmatic functions. Once grammatical gender is viewed through a sociolinguistic lens, with the agency of speakers being recognized, it becomes clear that it may not be fully understood without taking into account the context of interaction at a micro-level, and the sociohistorical characteristics of—for instance—regions with language contact at a macro-level.*

«E’ hel ei – e’ halv ei» – om realiseringa av ubestemt hokjønnsartikkel i Oslo

“…Genuskategorien, og ikkje minst bruken av femininformer, har vorte assosiert med bestemte praksisar og tilhøyrsel til ulike identitetskategoriar (Fløgstad og Eiesland 2019, Opsahl 2021. Tre konkrete døme kan vere korleis somme typar genusvariasjon indekserer tilhøyrsel til fleirspråklege, urbane miljø; korleis fråveret av femininum har kunna indeksere geografisk tilhøyrsel i Bergen, eller korleis opphoping av femininformer i ein periode av etterkrigstida kunne indeksere ein venstre radikal politisk ståstad.…”

“…, Busterud, Lohndal, Rodina og Westergaard (2019Westergaard ( , 2020 og Opsahl (2021). Seinast har genusendringar vorte eit forskingsfokus i prosjektet Grammatical Gender in Norwegian Dialects: Variation, Acquisition & Change (GenVAC), der fleire av dei nemnde forskarane -og dessutan begge forfattarane av denne artikkelen -er involverte.…”

Gender Systems in Germanic

“…Norwegian shows a particularly complex situation, as it has many dialects with different gender systems and seems to be changing rapidly (Lohndal & Westergaard, 2021). The standard varieties of Nynorsk and "radical" Bokmål distinguish the traditional three genders (Opsahl, 2021). The issue of three-way versus two-way systems is taken up again in section 3, embedded in a discussion of gender agreement.…”