30.3582, Review: Morphology; Pragmatics; Semantics; Sociolinguistics; Syntax: Aikhenvald (2018)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-30-3582. Mon Sep 23 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 30.3582, Review: Morphology; Pragmatics; Semantics; Sociolinguistics; Syntax: Aikhenvald (2018)

Moderator: Malgorzata E. Cavar (linguist at linguistlist.org)
Student Moderator: Jeremy Coburn
Managing Editor: Becca Morris
Team: Helen Aristar-Dry, Everett Green, Sarah Robinson, Peace Han, Nils Hjortnaes, Yiwen Zhang, Julian Dietrich
Jobs: jobs at linguistlist.org | Conferences: callconf at linguistlist.org | Pubs: pubs at linguistlist.org

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Jeremy Coburn <jecoburn at linguistlist.org>
================================================================


Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2019 10:55:18
From: Menglin Wang [wangmenglin at btbu.edu.cn]
Subject: How Gender Shapes the World

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36525577


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/30/30-235.html

AUTHOR: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
TITLE: How Gender Shapes the World
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2018

REVIEWER: Menglin Wang

SUMMARY

The connection between language and gender is not new in gender studies or
sociolinguistics. As its name suggests, the monograph How Gender Shapes the
World written by Alexandra Aikhenvald contributes to the field by illustrating
how gender is expressed in languages, and further exploring how linguistic
gender reflects and shapes natural gender, social gender and even the world we
live in. With her extensive experience in New Guinea and Amazonia, the author
draws a considerable number of examples from minority languages and cultures
from these places, as well as  from familiar Indo-European languages.

The book is composed of 12 themed chapters. Serving as a brief introduction,
Chapter 1 “The multifaceted gender” starts from clarifying three faces of
gender: linguistic gender, natural gender and social gender with their
definitions, differences and interactions, and highlights the central position
of linguistic gender. The chapter also states explicitly the theme of the
book, raises a series of research questions such as “What makes it (linguistic
gender) a useful linguistic resource rather than an encumbrance for poor
language learners”? (p. 6), and outlines the organization of the book.

Chapters 2, 3, and 4 focus on linguistic genders and their significance. The
overall gender system in language is introduced in Chapter 2 “Linguistic
gender and its expression”. Aikhenvald first sums up the general properties of
linguistic genders, and explains how gender can be marked overtly (e.g., in
Portuguese), covertly (e.g., in German) or with anaphoric gender (e.g., in
English). The author then looks at gender agreement in anaphoric gender and
the interaction between linguistic gender and other linguistic categories such
as numbers and definiteness, and also takes Romanian and Gaaguju as examples
to point out that a language may have a different set of gender forms used in
different contexts. She discusses principles of linguistic gender choice in
many languages by meaning and (or) by form, and concludes that the choice of
linguistic gender may be transparent only to a limited extent. In the last
section of the chapter the author raises the issue of markedness in linguistic
gender: masculine gender (especially anaphoric forms) is the functionally
unmarked choice in many languages.   

Chapter 3 “Round women and long men: physical properties in linguistic gender”
continues the discussion on the choice of linguistic gender. Aikhenvald
explicitly illustrates the principles of gender assignment in Manambu (a
language from New Guinea) as an example, where the linguistic gender of
non-humans is based on their sizes and shapes – the long and large take the
masculine while the small and round take the feminine. Though a similar
principle goes beyond New Guinea to many African languages as well, the author
also found the correlation of large size with feminine gender in some
languages (e.g., Cantabrian Spanish). She summarizes that size as gendering
parameter can offer contradictory results but the shape rule is more
consistent: narrow, elongated and vertical things are always associated with
masculine gender while feminine includes the opposite, projecting typical
biological features of male and female natural gender to words. Meanwhile, the
author suggests that assignment of linguistic gender also reflects attitudes,
cultural importance and value, mirroring the stereotypes of social gender. 

As would be expected, readers are presented the functions of linguistic gender
in Chapter 4 “What are linguistic genders good for”. Aikhenvald argues that
along with other noun categorization devices, linguistic genders help
underline different meanings of the same noun, create new lexical items (and
create elaborate metaphors by manipulating the existing ones), disambiguate
referents in discourse, transfer properties of natural gender to inanimate
objects, and reflect social and cultural changes. The author discusses some of
the functions in detail in the following chapters. 

Chapter 5 “Gender meanings in grammar and lexicon” introduces a variety of
other means that can also express animacy, humanness and sex – meaning
associated with gender systems, and how gender meanings are expressed in
so-called “gender-less” languages. Working definitions of numeral classifiers,
noun classfiers and verbal classifiers are provided, followed by thorough
explanation of how these devices refer to sex, animacy or even social status.
The author also shows that other noun categories–number, case and declension
type--can articulate the above parameters. She ends with examples of gender
expression in gender-less languages, for example gender expressed by using
different affixes, showing that with or without linguistic gender the
reference to sexes remains largely male-biased. 

The evolution of linguistic gender is the theme of Chapter 6 “The rise and
fall of linguistic genders”. Aikhenvald analyses five pathways of linguistic
gender development, such as “from generic nouns to noun classifiers and then
to linguistic gender” (p. 79). To illustrate how gender can be reshaped,
readers are presented the story of English, and can see the clear process of
gender impoverishment from Old English (with three agreement genders) to
modern English (with only anaphoric genders). Then the author switches focus
to external reasons of gender evolution: when languages are in contact,
linguistic genders can be lost, evolved or readjusted. She concludes that
sexist language can be targeted in language reforms as societies move forward.
  

With a dozen of examples, Chapter 7 discusses the effects of linguistic gender
reversal – referring to a man as if he were a woman and to a woman as if she
were a man, and the reflection of social gender and stereotypes in these
cases. She found effects vary in languages and contexts: it can create jocular
effects in some cultures, while in other languages it can be viewed as an
offence (dragging a man down to a “woman’s level”) or a praise (“promoting”
women to a higher status); it is also a way to show endearment and solidarity.
The rest of the chapter concerns the exploration of social attitudes and
values in linguistic genders, by investigating the negative overtone of
femininity, the invisibility of women under the masculine generics, and social
status and power in linguistic markedness. The author reminds us that having
the feminine gender as the unmarked form does not guarantee women a privileged
place in the society. 

In chapter 8 “The images of gender”, Aikhenvald dives into a bigger world:
gender as a treasure chest of metaphors – often seen in myths, poetry and
images. She first illustrates that the choice of linguistic genders is based
on legends and myths in the language, with examples of “moon” and “sun” in
many languages. In turn, inanimate items are given male or female natural
genders in beliefs, superstitions and poetic metaphors in accordance to their
linguistic gender. The famous German poem Fichtenbaum exemplifies the fact
that partial meaning may be lost when translating into languages with a
different gender system. The author then cites several experiments to answer
the question whether linguistic gender influences people’s perception of the
world (Konishi 1993; Sera, Berge, and del Castillo 1994; Boroditsky, Schmidt
and Phillips 2003), noting “linguistic gender…may reflect the roles and images
with social genders – but do not have to” (p.132). 

Chapter 9 focuses on social genders in speech practices, inspecting in
gender-exclusive languages, gender-variable languages and languages used by
the other genders. Male and female dialects may differ phonologically or
morphologically in gender-exclusive languages, and the specific dialect is
chosen depending on speaker and/or addressees. It also hints at the
construction of social gender; for example, Japanese women’s dialect requires
more honorific forms than men, automatically putting women in a subordinate
position. Though more difficult to capture, men and women speak differently in
gender-variable languages. Aikhenvald reviews research on the differences and
the reasons, supplementing with evidence she collected in minority languages.
These features can be manipulated to establish identities of gays, lesbians
and transgendered persons.

Chapter 10 “The rituals of gender” reveals the role social genders play in
distinctions in speech genres and practices, as mentioned in previous
chapters. Looking at labor division of traditional societies, the author found
in general public speeches and important ceremonies are men’s domain while
women are restricted to domestic life. Some secret languages and language
registers are used in male-only rituals; both the language and the ritual are
forbidden to women. However, there is not any evidence suggesting the
existence of women- only registers. Aikhenvald also explores women’s role in
language maintenance: they can be viewed either as language keepers who
promote traditional languages or language killers who abandon the language to
embrace modernity and change, but she also argues that the scapegoating of
women removes men’s responsibilities and does not acknowledge the
vulnerability of women. 

Chapter 11 “Gender in grammar and society” responds to the research question
“how does linguistic gender reflect social changes and improvement of women’s
place?”. Aikhenvald begins with reviewing the expression of social gender in
linguistic gender, and the reflection of social inequality through linguistic
gender asymmetries with more examples. The author then tracks some changes in
linguistic gender after women’s gaining more access to the public sphere, such
as the phasing out of genderlects in Japanese. With the rise of the feminist
movement, “sexist languages” are under attack and have gradually changed to
some extent. We can see some positive outcomes: the generic use of “he” is
being replaced with “gender-neutral” languages (e.g., he/she); more inclusive
vocabulary (e.g., chair or chairperson) are promoted to fight against “general
masculine”; the title “Ms.” has been adopted to avoid marking women’s marital
status. Chapter 12 “the heart of the matter: envoi” reemphasizes the most
important points discussed in the book, and offers directions for future
research.   

EVALUATION

Alexandra Aikhenvald’s How Gender Shapes the World is indeed an interesting
book to read. With her proficiency in dozens of languages and her field work
in minority groups, Aikhenvald provides readers with a vast number of language
samples– from almost every continent with human society- in every chapter,
echoing “the world” in the book title. The language samples and ethnographical
observations of traditional tribes are the greatest merits of the book. They
undoubtedly serve as solid foundation for the author’s analysis and
discussion, but they also broaden readers’ knowledge of languages and
cultures. Personally, I learnt many interesting facts about linguistic gender,
such as the fact that one word (e.g., ‘house’ in Manambu) can be assigned to
different genders based on its size. 

The book answers all of the research questions explicitly and clearly. It
draws on classic theories and research in the field, such as Lakoff (1975) and
Holmes (1986) but with the prominence given to minority languages and
cultures, it tries to avoid the bias from western stereotypes. Written from a
linguistic perspective, the book targets undergraduate/postgraduate students
or professionals with sufficient knowledge in linguistics, especially if the
language they speak has a simple gender system. Educators can also use some
chapters from the book as readings in courses such as Sociolinguistics or
Language and Gender. Though the book has a grammar focus and contains lots of
samples from minority groups, it is written and organized with great clarity.
Each phrase or sentence is not only accompanied with English translation (of
the whole phrase or sentence), but also English translation of each word and
their grammatical properties, to facilitate comprehension. 

One minor criticism of the book is the problem with the title of Chapter 7
section 5 “Attitudes to social genders through linguistic gender reversals”.
It is a bit misleading as the section shifts focus from linguistic gender
reversals to attitudes behind linguistic genders, such as negative overtones
of femininity, so I would suggest to delete the word “reversals” in the
section title. However, this minor item does not in any way affect the overall
quality of this excellent monograph.

REFERENCES

Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2016. How Gender Shapes the World. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

Boroditsky, Lera, Lauren A. Schmidt, and Webb Phillips. 2003. ‘Sex, syntax and
semantics’, pp. 61–80 of Language in mind: advances in the study of language
and cognition, edited by Dedre Gentner and Susan Goldin-Meadow. Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press.

Holmes, Janet. 1986. ‘Functions of you know in women’s and men’s speech’.
Language in Society 15: 1–21.

Konishi, T. 1993. ‘The semantics of grammatical gender: a cross-cultural
study’. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 22: 519–34.

Lakoff, Robin Tolmach. 1975. Language and woman’s place. New York: Harper and
Row.

Sera, M., C. Berge, and J. del Castillo. 1994. ‘Grammatical and conceptual
forces in the attribution of gender by English and Spanish speakers’.
Cognitive Development 9: 261–92.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Menglin Wang is a lecturer in English as a foreign language at Beijing
Technology and Business University. She also has taught English in primary and
secondary school in China. Her teaching and research interests include
sociolinguistics, computer-assisted language learning and second language
acquisition.





------------------------------------------------------------------------------

***************************    LINGUIST List Support    ***************************
 The 2019 Fund Drive is under way! Please visit https://funddrive.linguistlist.org
  to find out how to donate and check how your university, country or discipline
     ranks in the fund drive challenges. Or go directly to the donation site:
               https://iufoundation.fundly.com/the-linguist-list-2019

                        Let's make this a short fund drive!
                Please feel free to share the link to our campaign:
                    https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/
 


----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-30-3582	
----------------------------------------------------------