female women

[Alphen, I.C. van]

The Dutch language has many -more or less productive- suffices which make male forms (which are also called -by some ignorant people- gender-neutral- forms) feminine i.e.: -ster, -e, esse, -in, and some others. In our language two systems co-occur: use of male term for both genders ('unmarked' form): "she is a writer" (schrijver)  or use of feminine form: "she is a writress" (schrijfster) or indeed: double gender: "she is a female writress" (vrouwelijke schrijfster: hits in Google: 1930, 'female actress': 602.000!; Dutch 'vrouwelijke actrice': 2250) 
The double genderform is perhaps due to the co-occurrence of the two systems, which make people insecure. (The Dutch feminine suffices have - by the way- a less negative connotation than the English -esse, except from the " usual" loss of status of being a woman, for instance: it is better to be The Best Writer, than to be the Best Female Writer or Best Writress because of the markedness for gender of the latter two forms.)
Because of the co-occurrence of the two systems in Dutch we cannot say that inappropriateness or rarity of the feminine noun is a reason for double gender, as is suggested by Baron. Emphasize its negativity? Perhaps, but maybe also to emphasize the female or feminine sex ( I deliberately use the word sex here) of the subject spoken about. The tiny FEMsuffices (-ster,-e, -in) at the end (!) of the nouns are apparently not enough for the hearer or reader to conceptualise the person as a woman. Perhaps by hearing or reading the first letters of a word "writ.." people first get the male form out of their mental lexicon (the priming process) due to dominance of this word/underlying gender in most societies. By adding "female"/"vrouwelijk" or a prefix "nais.."in Finnish) before the lexical crucial term the hearer is helped to make the right interpretation. By ending it with a suffix, the male conceptualised kernel WORD becomes embedded by two feminine markers (both having half power...?)
Another explanation is that double gender is a form of hypercorrection in order "not to forget women" because I found in Dutch the following forms of grammatical hypercorrection*:
(1) Harry Mulish[male writer] makes a choice of his or her favourite moves. 
(2) Ruud Gullit,[male player in very male Dutch soccer team that lost very important match, and asked for reason], answered:  "one can not say it is his or her fault"  
Did anyone found examples like (1) en (2) in another language or is this Double Dutch?????

 
*Ingrid van ALPHEN, 1996. 'Beroepsnamen en beroepskeuzen v/m. Een sociolinguïstische analyse van de beroepskeuzen van 15-jarige meisjes en jongens in Nederland.' In: Leegwater-Van der Linden, M. (red.) Taal en beeldvorming; over vrouwen en mannen, Maart 1996, 42-54. Zoetermeer: Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschappen. 

Dr. Ingrid C. van Alphen

UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM
Linguistics>Sociolinguistics>Language & Gender
Spuistraat 210; 1012 VT Amsterdam
The Netherlands
phone:(+31)-20-5253872
fax:     (+31)-20-5253021

i.c.vanalphen at uva.nl           !!!!NEW!!!!


-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: SEMAHAT ISIL ACIKALIN [mailto:iacikali at ANADOLU.EDU.TR]
Verzonden: vrijdag 6 juni 2003 10:54
Aan: GALA-L at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Onderwerp: Re: female women


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.