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The Acquisition of Gender: Crosslinguistic perspectives
Edited by Dalila Ayoun
[Studies in Bilingualism 63] 2022
► pp. 49–70

Chapter 3
Empirical evidence for subtle gender biases in language

| University of Cologne
| University of Duisburg-Essen

This chapter presents empirical evidence from social psychological and psycholinguistic studies to provide an insight on mechanisms underlying gender inequality represented and maintained through language. The reviewed phenomena cover linguistic manifestations of gender and gender stereotypes that range from relatively superficial word semantics to gender asymmetries ingrained deeply in grammatical language systems, such as the category of verbs and the case system. The existing studies on biases in language suggest that even linguistic phenomena seemingly unrelated to gender (e.g. negations or thematic structure) may function as mechanisms supporting gender stereotypical beliefs. Such biases present a special challenge when it comes to identifying them; however, revealing their mechanisms has important implications for initiatives aiming at neutralizing their negative social consequences.

Keywords: gender, bias, gender-fair language, stereotype
Article outline
  • 1.Empirical evidence for gender biases in language
  • 2.Linguistic phenomena representing biases
    • 2.1Linguistic intergroup and expectancy bias
    • 2.2Negation bias
    • 2.3Irony bias
    • 2.4Male bias in “generic” masculine and “gender-fair” alternatives
    • 2.5Gender mismatch effects as indicators of biases
  • 3.Social agency and its linguistic representations
    • 3.1Verbs as markers of agency
    • 3.2Case syncretism
    • 3.3Thematic agents
  • 4.Conclusions
  • References
Published online: 20 January 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.63.03esa
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