female women and Turkish case

[N. Yetkiner]

Dear Mila,

I would like to add sth more to Ms Acikalin's contributions about
Turkish case.
As far as I understand you look for  double gender marking as you
illustrated in your examples.Turkish , however, displays a sort of
grammatical neurality in job descriptions, except some borrowed
words from other languages such as muallim (teacher), muallime
(female teacher) or mudur (director) and mudire (female director).
Nevertheless,as F.Braun argues, (now, I am coping this part from my
last paper for you) Turkish has a “covert gender system”. She shows
that grammatical neutrality as it is the case in Turkish does not
necessarily correspond to gender neutrality in discourse. Furthermore,
Braun's data reveal the fact that even grammatically neutral forms can be
gender biased. A general rule to be drawn from her data is that male
gender remains usually unmarked regardless of context but female
gender tends to be overtly expressed as in the case of “bayan polis” (lit.)
lady police. This fact makes females appear as the "deviant gender" in
social practices in terms of many occupations and social roles.
Best,

Neslihan Yetkiner
Ps. Isil HAnim sizinle ICTL2002'de tanismistik, sevgi ve saygilar.
On 6 Jun 2003, at 12:52, SEMAHAT ISIL ACIKALIN wrote:

> On Fri, 6 Jun 2003 12:49:52 +0400
>  SEMAHAT ISIL ACIKALIN <iacikali at ANADOLU.EDU.TR> wrote:
> > *This message was transferred with a trial version of CommuniGate(tm)
> > Pro*
> > On Thu, 5 Jun 2003 20:42:07 +0300
> >  Mila K Engelberg <engelber at CC.HELSINKI.FI> wrote:
> > > *This message was transferred with a trial version of
> > CommuniGate(tm)
> > > Pro*
> > > 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.
> > Dear Mila,in Turkish we have also marked terms.For example for female
> > director we say 'bayan mudur where bayan indicates the sex or bayan
> > ogretmen indicating female teacher.As for addressing we use ogretmen
> > hanim or muduranim where h sound is dropped in the second.Other
> > examples
> > are:bayan doktor(doctor),bayan satici (saleswoman).etc....


Neslihan Yetkiner
Department of Language and Communication
University of Groningen
P.O.Box 716
9700 AS Groningen/The Netherlands
Tel:+31-50-3638135 FAx:+31-50-3636855
e-mail:N.Yetkiner at let.rug.nl