27.1504, Review: General Ling; Socioling; Typology: Hellinger, Motschenbacher (2015)
The LINGUIST List via LINGUIST
linguist at listserv.linguistlist.org
Thu Mar 31 17:51:13 UTC 2016
LINGUIST List: Vol-27-1504. Thu Mar 31 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.
Subject: 27.1504, Review: General Ling; Socioling; Typology: Hellinger, Motschenbacher (2015)
Moderators: linguist at linguistlist.org (Damir Cavar, Malgorzata E. Cavar)
Reviews: reviews at linguistlist.org (Anthony Aristar, Helen Aristar-Dry, Robert Coté, Sara Couture)
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org
***************** LINGUIST List Support *****************
Fund Drive 2016
25 years of LINGUIST List!
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/
Editor for this issue: Sara Couture <sara at linguistlist.org>
================================================================
Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2016 13:50:48
From: Christopher Sams [samsc at sfasu.edu]
Subject: Gender Across Languages
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36117617
Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-2416.html
EDITOR: Marlis Hellinger
EDITOR: Heiko Motschenbacher
TITLE: Gender Across Languages
SUBTITLE: Volume 4
SERIES TITLE: IMPACT: Studies in Language and Society 36
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2015
REVIEWER: Christopher D. Sams, Stephen F. Austin State University
Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry
SUMMARY
Volume Three of Gender Across Languages appeared in 2003; the long-awaited
Volume Four is a welcome addition to the series. The main goal of the series
is, “…that the formal and functional manifestations of gender in the area of
human reference follow general, and perhaps universal principles in the
world’s languages” (2). Gender Across Languages Volume 4, edited by Marlis
Hellinger and Heiko Motschenbacher, begins with the table of contents followed
by a list of the languages covered in Volumes One through Three. Following the
preface and acknowledgements, a list of abbreviations is included at the
onset.
The introductory chapter ‘Gender across languages: The linguistic
representation of women and men’ is reprinted from the other three volumes
(adjusted for references). It includes both typological and sociolinguistic
perspectives, As well as extensive references. Heiko Motschenbacher provides
insight into the state of gender and language over the past decade with a new
chapter ‘Some new perspectives on gendered language structures,’ which
examines theoretical shifts, cognitive linguistic evidence, corpus linguistic
evidence, and contrastive linguistic evidence. The chapter also provides
insight into the present volume and again provides extensive references.
Twelve languages (arranged alphabetically) are covered in this volume, and
each chapter loosely follows the same descriptive format, examining the
categories of gender that exist in the language, the gender-related
structures, and the usage of personal reference forms. In my summary below, I
will highlight some of the features which make each chapter unique.
‘Structural gender trouble in Croatian,’ by Heiko Motschenbacher and Marija
Weikert, offers an examination of when animal terms are used for personal
reference, address terms and language related vocabulary, and language change
and language reform.
Sabine Fiedler examines Esperanto in ‘Gender in a planned language: Esperanto’
paying careful attention to language reform and gender in Esperanto proverbs.
In ‘The representation of gender in Estonian’, Cornelius Hasselblatt includes
argumentation that dictionaries “…have played a prominent role in the
development of Estonian language awareness…” (141).
In ‘Probing the manifestations of gender in Ga’, Benedicta Adokarley Lomotey
addresses gender in male generics, terms of abuse (e.g., insults), and the
connotations of the variations of the words in Ga for ‘woman’ and ‘man’. Ga is
a “grammatically genderless language” (168), but nevertheless “…there are
other ways in which gender differentiation can be communicated, enacted, and
perpetuated…” (168).
Helen Christen and Daniel Elmiger describe Swiss German in ‘Gender in Swiss
German’ (German was examined in Volume 3). They address the social and legal
status of Swiss German, generic masculines, occupational terms, and proper
nouns.
Louise O. Vasvári addresses a grammatically genderless language like Ga in
‘Gender trouble in a grammatically genderless language: Hungarian’. A
highlight here is the treatment of naming conventions and courtesy titles as
well as idioms, proverbs, and obscene expressions.
Igbo is focused on by Arua E. Arua in ‘The linguistic representation and
communication of gender in Igbo’. Of note here is the coverage of honorifics,
chieftaincy titles (…those that traditional rules confer on citizens…) (235),
and naming.
Geoffrey Haig and Ergin Öpengin investigate Kurdish in ‘Gender in Kurdish:
Structural and socio-cultural dimensions’. In addition to the canonical areas
of each chapter, they examine public discourse on gender in language.
‘Gender in Oneida’ is examined by Karin Michelson. She explores the use of the
feminine -zoic and its relatively complex description, which is caused by its
number of uses.
‘Gender in Portuguese’ is the focus of a chapter by Annette Endruschat. She
provides a section that focuses on debates on professional terms, guidelines
for non-sexist language use, and gender-neutral forms in writing.
Ursula Doleshal describes Slovenian in ‘Gender in Slovenian’. An addition here
is the inclusion of usage patterns in Slovenian dictionaries, and address
terms and other personal nouns in other gender contexts.
In the final chapter, Thai is explored by Korakoch Attaviriyanupap in ‘The
linguistic representation of gender in Thai’. Particles and interjections and
the linguistic representation of the third gender are addressed.
The book concludes with notes on the contributors.
EVALUATION
The organization of the volume by the editors is excellent. The formatting is
flawless and everything is presented in a clear and logical order. The
editors, Marlis Hellinger and Heiko Motschenbacher, make it easily accessible
as a stand-alone volume as well as a reference to previous volumes; it is
helpful that the beginning of the book contains lists of languages contained
in the other three volumes. The fourth volume is freestanding in that the
editors begin with the aims and scope of the project, and offer a very clear
and concise delineation of their operational terminology and definitions,
e.g., classifier languages, noun class languages, categories of gender
(grammatical, lexical, referential, and social). Heiko Motschenbacher includes
theoretical advances which have occurred in the field over the past decade.
This volume also covers a wide variety of languages from an eclectic selection
of language families, including several languages which are not well
documented in the area of gender and language.
Each chapter follows a cohesive structure; the charts and formatting are very
clean and easy to follow. It seems that all of the authors were on the same
page with the areas covered and each aims to reach a general audience. Many of
the chapters begin with reference to gender in terms of which many
students/scholars are aware (e.g., referencing grammatical gender using
examples from Spanish as several chapters do). This volume follows the
previous three in its high quality and is appropriate for graduate level
research and above.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Chris Sams is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Stephen F. Austin State
University in Texas. His research and teaching interests are second language
acquisition, forensic linguistics, linguistic typology and universals,
language description and documentation, Romance linguistics, historical
linguistics, and translation studies. His current fieldwork is on Haya, a
Niger-Congo language spoken in Tanzania.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
***************** LINGUIST List Support *****************
Fund Drive 2016
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/
This year the LINGUIST List hopes to raise $79,000. This money
will go to help keep the List running by supporting all of our
Student Editors for the coming year.
Don't forget to check out Fund Drive 2016 site!
http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/
For all information on donating, including information on how to
donate by check, money order, PayPal or wire transfer, please visit:
http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/
The LINGUIST List is under the umbrella of Indiana University and
as such can receive donations through the eLinguistics Foundation,
which is a registered 501(c) Non Profit organization. Our Federal
Tax number is 45-4211155. These donations can be offset against
your federal and sometimes your state tax return (U.S. tax payers only).
For more information visit the IRS Web-Site, or contact your financial
advisor.
Many companies also offer a gift matching program, such that
they will match any gift you make to a non-profit organization.
Normally this entails your contacting your human resources department
and sending us a form that the eLinguistics Foundation fills in and
returns to your employer. This is generally a simple administrative
procedure that doubles the value of your gift to LINGUIST, without
costing you an extra penny. Please take a moment to check if
your company operates such a program.
Thank you very much for your support of LINGUIST!
----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-27-1504
----------------------------------------------------------
Visit LL's Multitree project for over 1000 trees dynamically generated
from scholarly hypotheses about language relationships:
http://multitree.org/
More information about the LINGUIST
mailing list