32.2351, Calls: Germanic; Romance; Gen Ling, Hist Ling, Psycholing, Socioling, Text/Corpus Ling/Portugal

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-32-2351. Mon Jul 12 2021. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 32.2351, Calls: Germanic; Romance; Gen Ling, Hist Ling, Psycholing, Socioling, Text/Corpus Ling/Portugal

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Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2021 13:53:50
From: Benjamin Fagard [benjamin.fagard at ens.psl.eu]
Subject: Between feminine and masculine: language(s) and society

 
Full Title: Between feminine and masculine: language(s) and society 
Short Title: BetFaM2021 

Date: 09-Dec-2021 - 10-Dec-2021
Location: Lisbon, Portugal 
Contact Person: Benjamin Fagard
Meeting Email: benjamin.fagard at ens.psl.eu
Web Site: https://www.lattice.cnrs.fr/betfam2021/ 

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Historical Linguistics; Psycholinguistics; Sociolinguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics 

Language Family(ies): Germanic; Romance 

Call Deadline: 31-Aug-2021 

Meeting Description:

The motivation of this conference is to provide scientific data on the
possibility of gender-inclusive language and the possible evolution towards
gender-neutral language – an ongoing process in much of the Western world,
albeit not without debates. Since the end of the 70’s, the issue of language
and gender has fostered an abundant literature in various domains. There has
been a steep increase in interest for these issues in recent years. 

The body of literature on gender in linguistics clearly points to the
existence of a typologically common imbalance between genders, with strong
disparities across languages. In some languages, gender is explicitly marked,
with morphosyntactic morphemes; in other, it is marked only in pronouns, or
barely marked at all. Such systems are far from balanced, or symmetrical: like
all linguistic paradigms, they contain exceptions – one important source of
asymmetry being the so-called generic use of the masculine, another one the
existence of semantic asymmetries (see e.g. for French Yaguello 1978 ). One
question in point is whether the imbalance in linguistic gender systems is
purely the result of the natural evolution of language, or whether it results
at least partly from human intervention. 

Another issue is whether this gender asymmetry is a source of discrimination.
Is it a minor issue with little importance for society – are there, as has
been said over and over again, other, more important issues to deal with, such
as equal pay? Or is it an important issue, having consequences for the
cognitive build-up of children? This has been a key question in
psycholinguistic studies on gender, and experiments have shown repeatedly that
the gender asymmetry, and specifically the generic masculine, do have an
impact on our cognitive representations, in English, German, French, and
probably whatever the language (Trömel-Plötz 1978, Braun et al. 1998,
Stahlberg et al. 2007, Gabriel & Gygax 2016, Gygax et al. 2019). Like
algorithms (Bolukbasi et al., 2016), humans seem to be sensitive to the
discriminations induced by gender asymmetries. 

A final question (for now) is whether this asymmetry is inevitable, or if
there are ways to go toward a greater balance between genders. For instance,
much has been said and written about the neutral Swedish pronoun hen (Sendén
et al. 2015), but neutral pronouns have appeared in other languages. Scholars
who study the various ways of achieving gender equality in language do not
necessarily agree on how we should go about this. Is it possible to come up
with a toolkit for inclusive language?


Call for Papers: 

You can submit your abstract (between 500 and 1,000 words, i.e. 1 or 2 pages,
including references) in English, Portuguese or French, on Easychair
(https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=betfam2021), until August 31, 2021.
Notifications will be sent by September 20.

Inscriptions: between September and the end of October.

For further information, please contact us at
colloque-masculin-feminin at ens.fr.

Invited Speakers: 
Gabriele Diewald, Universität Hannover
Daniel Elmiger, Université de Genève
Bernard Cerquiglini, Université Paris 7

Organizing Committee
Ana Margarida Abrantes, CECC, Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Marine Delaborde, Lattice (ENS, Sorbonne Nouvelle & CNRS; PSL)
Benjamin Fagard, Lattice (CNRS, ENS & Sorbonne Nouvelle; PSL)
Peter Hanenberg, Universidade Católica do Portugal & CECC
Gabrielle Le Tallec, Cergy & Lattice (CNRS, ENS & Sorbonne Nouvelle; PSL)

Scientific Committee: 
Julie Abbou, Université Paris 7, LLF
Ana Margarida Abrantes, Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Marie-Ève Arbour, Office Québécois de la Langue Française
Giuseppe Balirano, University of Naples « L’Orientale »
Bernard Cerquiglini, Université Paris 7
Ann Coady, Aix-Marseille Université
Marine Delaborde, Lattice (ENS, Sorbonne Nouvelle & CNRS; PSL)
Daniel Elmiger, University of Geneva
Benjamin Fagard, Lattice (ENS, Sorbonne Nouvelle & CNRS; PSL)
Auphélie Ferreira, Lattice (ENS, Sorbonne Nouvelle & CNRS; PSL)
Peter Hanenberg, Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Gabrielle Le Tallec, Paris XIII & Lattice (ENS, Sorbonne Nouvelle & CNRS; PSL)
Inés Lozano, Universitat Politècnica de València
Machteld Meulleman, Université de Reims
Martin Pleško, University of Ostrava, Czech Republic
Laure Sarda, Lattice (ENS, Sorbonne Nouvelle & CNRS; PSL)




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LINGUIST List: Vol-32-2351	
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