Sexist German- non-sexist English or non-sexist German–sexist English? Historical observations on a pragmatic question  

Oleh:

Kastovsky, Dieter ; Dalton-Puffer, Christiane

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Language Sciences (Full Text) vol. 24 no. 3-4 (2002), page 285–296.
Topik: Word-formation; Political correctness; Gender; Feminisation; Personal (agent) noun; Genderspecific suffix
Fulltext: 24_03-04_Kastovsky.pdf (121.56KB)

Isi artikel

The paper investigates tendencies with regard to gender-specific or gender-non-specific designations in English and German by means of nouns in present-day usage as well as the historical development of these tendencies. German favours ‘‘feminisation’’,i.e. the overt marking of gender affiliation by the appropriate morphological form and the corresponding splitting,e.g. Professor/Professorin,because it has a productive suffix for this purpose. English, on the other hand,prefers neutralised forms and also treats the agent suffix -er as basically neutral,relegating the gender-specificity to pronominal coreference. The reason for this difference is the loss of the original Germanic feminising suffixes in English,where the Romance loan suffixes -ess and -ette never really became productive (usually they have a pejorative connotation),whereas in German the -in-suffix preserved its productivity and now has become a major instrument in the struggle for political correctness.

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