Article published in:
Gender, Language and the Periphery: Grammatical and social gender from the marginsEdited by Julie Abbou and Fabienne H. Baider
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 264] 2016
► pp. 65–88
A poststructuralist approach to structural gender linguistics
Initial considerations
This article attempts to counter the contemporary marginalisation of
structural gender linguistics within the field of language and gender. It argues
that, in order to make structural gender linguistics compatible with recent
developments in the field, it is necessary to initiate a conceptual shift from treating
language structures as stable parts of a language system to viewing them as
unstable and ever-changing in linguistic performance. This theoretical move
towards a poststructuralist approach to structural gender linguistics also
has methodological consequences. Its central aim is the de-essentialisation of
gendered language structures by documenting their heterogeneity, instability and
incoherence. This can be achieved in three major ways: cross-linguistic comparison,
historical linguistic description and analysis of the usage patterns of particular
forms. The three methods are illustrated using language material from English,
German and Croatian.
Keywords: contrastive linguistics, de-essentialisation, grammatical gender, historical linguistics, lexical gender, poststructuralism, referential gender, social gender, structural gender linguistics
Published online: 16 December 2016
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.264.04mot
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.264.04mot
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Cited by
Cited by 2 other publications
Kumar Kashyap, Abhishek
Steriopolo, Olga
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