female women and Turkish case

[Andrea Jacobs]

Dear Mila and Neslihan

I am completing my dissertation on language practices of Israeli
feminists and examining issues of gender marking in the Hebrew case.
Hebrew marks all nouns for masculine or feminine and the masculine forms
are treated as the unmarked. As such while gender is marked for both -
the treatment of the masculine as the unmarked results in the feminine
form being used primarily to mark gender of referents only when it is
socio-culturally significant. (This is not always the case, and the
prescriptive rules dictate otherwise.) My observations of language use
practices in contemporary Israel indicate that the use of feminine
gender marking for a profession is intended to call attention to the
gender of the worker - particularly if she is in a non-traditional
field. Thus a female CEO, but I have also found that in many cases, the
masculine form is used regardless of the gender of the individual unless
it is a field that is traditionally associated with women's work - thus
nurses, teachers, childcare workers, domestics, and prostitutes are
generically feminine. My research shows that the use of feminine titles
for women in non-traditional fields - heads of organizations, financial
officers, politicians, doctors, etc... is usually by the feminists as a
way of calling attention to the presence of women in these fields.

Andrea Jacobs

p.s. if someone could send me the full reference on F. Braun's work on
Turkish that would be great. thanks

N. Yetkiner wrote:

>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
>
>
>
>