gender affixing

[Janet Holmes]

I did some work in this area using a current corpus of New Zealand English compared to earlier corpora of USA and UK English

Holmes, Janet  1993	Sex-marking suffixes in New Zealand written English. American Speech 68, 4: 357-370. 

The paper supports Susan's suggestion that what she calls the "optional add-ons" are disappearing.

Here is the abstract

Abstract

This paper examines the distribution and meanings of the sex-marking suffixes -ess, -ette, -ine, -enne  and -ix  in the Wellington Corpus of written New Zealand English.  New Zealand usage and the frequencies of items in the New Zealand Corpus are compared with usage and frequencies in the Brown Corpus of American written English, the LOB Corpus of British written English, and, where possible, the Macquarie Corpus of written Australian English.  The results provide some evidence of language change over the  past 25 years. In particular, the range of types appears to have declined, as well as the numbers of tokens, and there is also evidence of semantic change.  While change may appear slow in this area of linguistic usage, it is generally in a direction which feminists will find encouraging. However, given the remarkable tenacity of some forms, it is probably wise not to be over-optimistic. 

Janet Holmes

-----Original Message-----
From: Susan Ervin-Tripp [mailto:ervintrp at SOCRATES.BERKELEY.EDU]
Sent: Wednesday, 11 June 2003 5:08 a.m.
To: GALA-L at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Subject: Re: gender affixing


Van Alphen's comment that female suffixes have negative
connotations in English made me wonder whether that is
too general a conclusion.

I would guess that the ones that are rather standard like
steward/stewardess, waiter/waitress, and actor/actress might
have relatively little in the way of extra value connotations
since there is so much effect of the job properties, and we experience
them in the same way.

The ones that seem like optional and rare add-ons like poet/poetess
or sculptor/sculptress, or are diminutives like majorette or suffragette
(which has no male version!!), are another matter.

Surely someone has separated these types in all the years of research
on this subject.

By the way, in my 1958 research on semantic connotations in
obligatory gender-affixing languages, I found that judges attributed
both goodness and beauty more to feminine-affixed than to
masculine-affixed invented words--but of course strength to the
masculine terms.

Susan Ervin-Tripp



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