Personenbezeichnungsmodelle auf dem Prüfstand

Rothmund, Jutta; Scheele, Brigitte

doi:10.1026/0044-3409.212.1.40

Cited by 32 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 23 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The gender-neutral usage of the masculine gender deviates from the more frequent relation of congruency between grammatical and biological gender for nouns that denote people (Duden Band 4, 1984, 1998. The question of whether masculine nouns in gender-neutral contexts are actually interpreted as gender neutral has been addressed in several experimental studies since the 1990s (Braun, Gottburgsen, Sczesny, & Stahlberg, 1998;Heise, 2000;Irmen & Kaczmarek, 1999;Irmen & Köhncke, 1996;Rothermund, 1998;Rothmund & Scheele, 2004;Scheele & Gauler, 1993;Stahlberg & Sczesny, 2001). Most studies' results agree that masculine generics lead to a lesser inclusion of women than men in mental representations compared to linguistic alternatives that comprise a feminine form.…”

Section: Findings From Studies On Masculine Generic Denotationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender Markedness of Language

Irmen

Roßberg

2004

Journal of Language and Social Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Three experiments investigated how grammatical gender and gender stereotypicality influence the way person information is mentally represented. Participants read sentences about social groups denoted by nouns with different grammatical gender and stereotypicality. A following sentence contained a reference to the social group that qualified the group members as female, male, or neither one. Experiment 1 tested grammatically masculine nouns; Experiment 2 tested gender-balanced forms, composed of the masculine and the feminine or neither one; and Experiment 3 tested nouns without gender inflection. Stereotypicality varied within studies. Second sentence reading times differed depending on the fit between grammatical gender and stereotypicality of the first sentence’s subject and the subsequent information’s gender-relatedness. Both grammatical gender and stereotypicality contribute biological gender information to mentally represented person information. Strong grammatical input may override stereotypicality’s influence. The feminine’s influence seems to be weaker than the masculine’s. Results are discussed in the framework of the scenario mapping and focus approach.

show abstract

Section: Findings From Studies On Masculine Generic Denotationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender Markedness of Language

Irmen

Roßberg

2004

Journal of Language and Social Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…A variety of dependent variables were used to demonstrate that gender-fair language increases the mental representation of female exemplars compared to masculine generics, for example estimations of the gender distribution in certain groups (Braun et al, 1998), sentence finishing tests (e.g., Rothmund and Scheele, 2004), recognition tasks (e.g., Rothermund, 1998), or reading and reaction times (e.g., Irmen and Köncke, 1996; Irmen and Roßberg, 2004). The effects of gender-fair language seem to be moderated by participants’ attitudes toward gender-fair language (Stahlberg and Sczesny, 2001).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Breaking Away From the Male Stereotype of a Specialist: Gendered Language Affects Performance in a Thinking Task

et al. 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This experimental online-survey study investigated if different written language forms in German have an effect on male bias in thinking. We used answers to the specialist riddle as an indicator for male bias in mental representations of expertise. The difficulty of this thinking task lies in the fact that a gender-unspecified specialist is often automatically assumed to be a man due to gender stereotypes. We expected that reading a text in gender-fair language before processing the specialist riddle helps readers achieve control over automatically activated gender stereotypes and thus facilitates the restructuring and reinterpretation of the problem, which is necessary to reach the conclusion that the specialist is a woman. We randomly assigned 517 native German speakers (68% women) to reading a text on expertise written either in gender-fair language or in masculine generics. Subsequently, participants were asked to solve the specialist riddle. The results show that reading a text in gender-fair language before processing the riddle led to higher rates of answers indicating that the specialist is a women compared to reading a text in masculine generics (44% vs. 33%) in women and men regardless of their self-stereotyping concerning agency and communion. The findings indicate that reading even a very short text in gender-fair language can help people break their gender-stereotype habit and thus reduce male bias in thinking. Our research emphasizes the importance of using gender-fair language in German-language texts for reducing gender stereotypes.

show abstract

“…This language reform reflects the assumption that language, here gender-fair language, is a tool to influence people’s gendered perception of reality. For example, with respect to occupations, studies with adults and primary school children from countries with grammatical gender languages (e.g., French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian) suggest that they are perceived in a less gender-typed manner when they are described in gender-fair language, more specifically in pair forms (i.e., by explicit reference to both male and female jobholders, e.g., inventeuses et inventeurs ; French feminine and masculine plural forms for inventors), rather than masculine plural forms (e.g., inventors; Braun et al, 1998; Heise, 2000, 2003; Stahlberg and Sczesny, 2001; Stahlberg et al, 2001; Rothmund and Scheele, 2004; Vervecken et al, 2013; Vervecken and Hannover, 2015; for a discussion of this issue for natural gender languages e.g., English; see, e.g., Gabriel et al, 2008; Garnham et al, 2012; Lassonde and O’Brien, 2013). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Warm-hearted businessmen, competitive housewives? Effects of gender-fair language on adolescents’ perceptions of occupations

et al. 2015

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recent studies from countries with grammatical gender languages (e.g., French) found both children and adults to more frequently think of female jobholders and to consider women’s success in male dominated occupations more likely when the jobs were described in pair forms (i.e., by explicit reference to male and female jobholders, e.g., inventeuses et inventeurs; French feminine and masculine plural forms for inventors), rather than masculine only forms (e.g., inventors). To gain a better understanding of this phenomenon, we systematically varied the gender connotation of occupations (males overrepresented, females overrepresented, equal share of males and females) and measured additional dependent variables, predicting that gender fair language would reduce the impact of the gender connotation on participants’ perceptions. In a sample of 222 adolescents (aged 12–17) from French speaking Switzerland, we found that pair forms attenuated the difference in the ascription of success to male and female jobholders in gendered occupations and attenuated the differential ascription of warmth to prototypical jobholders in male vs. female dominated jobs. However, no effect of language form on the ascription of competence was found. These findings suggest that language policies are an effective tool to impact gendered perceptions, however, they also hint at competence-related gender stereotypes being in decline.

show abstract

Personenbezeichnungsmodelle auf dem Prüfstand

Cited by 32 publications

References 23 publications

Gender Markedness of Language

Gender Markedness of Language

Breaking Away From the Male Stereotype of a Specialist: Gendered Language Affects Performance in a Thinking Task

Warm-hearted businessmen, competitive housewives? Effects of gender-fair language on adolescents’ perceptions of occupations

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About