female women

[Mila K Engelberg]

Dear all,

I'm interested in your interpretations of female terms with double gender
marking, e.g. "female stewardess", "female actress", "female mistress" and
"female manageress"  in English. Similar titles exist in my native tongue
Finnish (which lacks both grammatical and natural gender). They  consist
of the prefix "nais-" 'female' and a feminine derivative, for example
"naisjumalatar" 'female goddess', "naislaulajatar" 'female singer+FEM',
"naiskaunotar" 'a female beautiful woman' or 'a female representative of
female beauty', "naiskarjakko" 'female cattle maid';

e.g. "Shakira on 25-vuotias kolumbialainen naislaulajatar."
'Shakira is a 25-year-old Colombian female singer+FEM'

Similar titles can be found in several other languages, too, e.g.
"kvinnelig gudinne" 'female goddess'  in Norwegian, "kvinnlig arbeterska"
'female woman worker' in Swedish. Gianna Marcato & Eva-Maria Thune  (2002,
214, footnote) report the expression "lavoratrice donna" 'female woman
worker' in Italian.

Women can be female men (e.g. "female president") and female humans (e.g.
"naisihminen" 'female+human being' in Finnish). But 'female women'? In
Dennis Baron's view  double gender marking in such feminine forms as "lady
patroness" and "womman synneresse" ('woman sinner')  occurs "perhaps to
underline the inappropriateness or rarity of the feminine noun, or to
emphasize its negativity" (1986, 115).

Have you come across expressions of this kind?

I wonder if there are corresponding titles for men  - I hear there is a
movie called "Male gigolo".

Best wishes,

Mila Engelberg
Department of General Linguistics
Helsinki University


References
Baron, Dennis 1986. Grammar and gender. Yale University Press, New Haven,
Conn.
Marcato, Gianna & Thune, Eva Maria 2002. Gender and female visibility in
Italian. In Hellinger, Marlis & Bussmann, Hadumod (eds.), Gender across
languages.  The linguistic representation of women and men. Volume 2.
Benjamins, Amsterdam. 187-217.