Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T04:01:40.519Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - Neutering Unpopular Politicians

The Neuter Gender and ‘It’ as a Dehumanizing Grammatical Metaphor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 June 2022

By
Natalia Knoblock  and
Yaroslava Sazonova
Edited by
Natalia Knoblock
Natalia Knoblock
Affiliation:
Saginaw Valley State University, Michigan
Get access

Summary

The chapter demonstrates the expressive and evaluative potential of grammatical gender and specifically highlights the ways ‘grammatical neutering’ can be used to belittle and other unpopular politicians. The authors develop the idea that in gendered languages intentional deviations from a grammatical norm are pragmatically loaded and express a notable implicit message. They present a number of examples collected from online Ukrainian-language sources where the neuter pronoun vono (it) was used to refer to two presidents: Putin, the president of the Russian Federation, and Zelensky, the president of Ukraine. Viewing such examples as cases of grammatical metaphor, the authors show that classifying a referent as ‘other’ may be achieved not only by lexical but also by grammatical means. The application of it and neuter morphology where feminine or masculine is expected while expressing disapproval produces a strong pragmatic effect. The addition of grammatical dehumanization and desexualization to derogatory semantic propositions magnifies the utterances’ negative impact and helps to communicate antipathy and dissociation. The chapter discusses the communicative consequences of grammatical metaphorization of the neuter third person pronoun in Ukrainian political discourse, drawing conclusions about pragmatic effects of grammatical gender alternations.

Keywords

grammatical genderneuter gendergrammatical metaphorgrammatical gender alterationdehumanizationdesexualizationpolitical discourseCMC
Type
Chapter
Information
The Grammar of Hate
Morphosyntactic Features of Hateful, Aggressive, and Dehumanizing Discourse
 , pp. 140 - 160
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Apresian, Yu. (1995). Izbrannyye Trudy [Selected Works]. Moscow, 1995.Google Scholar
Bandura, A. (2002). Selective moral disengagement in the exercise of moral agency. Journal of Moral Education, 31, 101–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bar-Tal, D. (2000). Shared Beliefs in a Society: Social Psychological Analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beliaeva, N., & Seals, C. A. (2020). Who are ‘they’ for Ukrainians in Ukraine and in the diaspora? Othering in political discourse. In Knoblock, N., (ed.), Language of Conflict: Discourses of the Ukrainian Crisis. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 137–156.Google Scholar
Bilan, Y., Mishchuk, H., Samoliuk, N., & Mishchuk, V. (2020). Gender discrimination and its links with compensations and benefits practices in enterprises. Entrepreneurial Business and Economics Review, 8(3), 189–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bilaniuk, L. (2004). A typology of surzhyk: Mixed Ukrainian–Russian language. International Journal of Bilingualism, 8(4), 409–425.Google Scholar
Bilaniuk, L. (2005). Contested Tongues: Language Politics and Cultural Correction in Ukraine. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Boccato, G., Capozza, D., Falvo, R., & Durante, F. (2008). The missing link: Ingroup, outgroup and the human species. Social Cognition, 26(2). DOI: 10.1521/soco.2008.26.2.224.Google Scholar
Bureychak, T. (2014). Gendernyi konservatizm i gomofobiya kak strategii moral’nogo spaseniya v sovremennoy Ukraine [Gender conservatism and homophobia as moral salvation strategies in modern Ukraine]. In Solomatina, I. & Shchurko, T. (eds.), Queer-seksual’nost’: politiki i praktiki [Queer Sexuality: Policies and Practices]. Minsk: Galiyafy, 103–107.Google Scholar
Bureychak, T., & Petrenko, O. (2015). Heroic masculinity in post-Soviet Ukraine: Cossacks, UPA and ‘Svoboda’. East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies, 2(2), 3–28.Google Scholar
Burnett, H., & Bonami, O. (2019). Linguistic prescription, ideological structure, and the actuation of linguistic changes: Grammatical gender in French parliamentary debates. Language in Society, 48(1), 65–93.Google Scholar
Cassese, E. C. (2020). Dehumanization of the opposition in political campaigns. Social Science Quarterly, 101(1), 107–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christopoulou, K., Xydopoulos, G. J., & Tsangalidis, A. (2017). Grammatical gender and offensiveness in MG slang vocabulary. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Greek Linguistics Vol. 1 (Berlin, September 2015), 291–305. Retrieved from www.cemog.fu-berlin.de/en/icgl12/offprints/christopoulou-xydopoulos-tsangalidis/index.htmlGoogle Scholar
Crawford, J., Modri, S., & Motyl, M. (2013). Bleeding-heart liberals and hard-hearted conservatives: Subtle political dehumanization through differential attributions of human nature and human uniqueness traits. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 1(1), 86–104. DOI:10.5964/jspp.v1i1.184Google Scholar
Dervin, F. (2015). Discourses of othering. In Tracy, J. (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1–9.Google Scholar
Gaunt, R., Leyens, J.-P., & Sindic, D. (2004). Motivated reasoning and the attribution of emotions to ingroup and outgroup. International Review of Social Psychology, 17, 5–20.Google Scholar
Goff, P. A., Eberhardt, J. L., Williams, M. J., & Jackson, M. C. (2008). Not yet human: Implicit knowledge, historical dehumanization, and contemporary consequences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 292–306. DOI: 10.1037/00223514. 94.2.292.Google Scholar
Hall, K. (2002). ‘Unnatural’ gender in Hindi. In Hellinger, M. & Bussmann, H. (eds.), Gender across Languages: The Linguistic Representation of Women and Men. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 133–162.Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K. (1985). An Introduction to Functional Grammar (1st ed.). London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K. (1998). Things and relations: Regrammaticising experience as technical knowledge. In Martin, J. R. & Veel, R. (eds.), Reading Science: Critical and Functional Perspectives on Discourses of Science. London: Routledge, 185–236.Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (1999). Construing Experience through Meaning: A Language-Based Approach to Cognition. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Haslam, N. (2006). Dehumanization: An integrative review. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(3), 252–264.Google Scholar
Haslam, N., Bain, P., Douge, L., Lee, M., & Bastian, B. (2005). More human than you: Attributing humanness to self and others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 937–950. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.89.6.937.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hellström, J. (2019). Dehumanization in everyday politics: A study of discursive dehumanization of beggars on social media [Master’s thesis, Uppsala University].Google Scholar
Herman, J. (2006). Please don’t call me ‘tranny’. Advocate. Retrieved from www.advocate.com/politics/commentary/2006/09/15/please-dont-call-me-trannyGoogle Scholar
Kelman, H. C. (1976). Violence without restraint: Reflections on the dehumanization of victims and victimizers. In Kren, G. M. & Rappoport, L. H. (eds.), Varieties of Psychohistory . New York: Springer, 282–314.Google Scholar
Knoblock, N. (ed.) (2020). Language of Conflict: Discourses of the Ukrainian Crisis. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Kteily, N., & Bruneau, E. (2017). Backlash: The politics and real-world consequences of minority group dehumanization. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43(1), 87–104.Google Scholar
Lawson, R. (2020). Language and masculinities: History, development, and future. Annual Review of Linguistics, 6, 409–434.Google Scholar
Leyens, J.-P., Rodriguez, A. P., Rodriguez, R. T., Gaunt, R., Paladino, P. M., Vaes, J., et al. (2001). Psychological essentialism and the attribution of uniquely human emotions to ingroups and outgroups. European Journal of Social Psychology, 31, 395–411.Google Scholar
Leyens, J.-P., Demoulin, S., Vaes, J., Gaunt, R., & Paladino, M. P. (2007). Infra-humanization: The wall of group differences. Social Issues and Policy Review, 1(1), 139–172.Google Scholar
Lumsden, K., & Harmer, E. (eds.) (2019). Online Othering: Exploring Digital Violence and Discrimination on the Web. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Martherus, J. L., Martinez, A. G., Piff, P. K., & Theodoridis, A. G. (2019). Party animals? Extreme partisan polarization and dehumanization. Political Behavior, 1–24. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-019-09559-4Google Scholar
Martin, J. R. (2008). Incongruent and proud: De-vilifying ‘nominalization’. Discourse and Society, 19(6), 801–810.Google Scholar
Musolff, A. (2015). Dehumanizing metaphors in UK immigrant debates in press and online media. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 3 (1), 41–56. https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.93.02musCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nissim, M. (2018). Transvestite, Transsexual, Transgender: Here’s what you should actually call trans people. Pink News. Retrieved from www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/03/19/transsexual-transgender-transvestite-what-should-you-call-trans-people/Google Scholar
O’Sullivan, M. (2020). The forgotten lives: Connecting gender, security, and everyday livelihoods in Ukraine’s conflict. Politics & Gender, 16(3). DOI: 10.1017/S1743923X20000343.Google Scholar
Pacilli, M. G., Roccato, M., Pagliaro, S., & Russo, S. (2016). From political opponents to enemies? The role of perceived moral distance in the animalistic dehumanization of the political outgroup. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 19(3), 360–373. DOI: 10.1177/1368430215590490.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Panther, K.-U. & Thornburg, L. L. (2009). Introduction: On figuration in grammar. In Panther, K.-U., Thornburg, L. L., & Barcelona, A. (eds.), Metonymy and Metaphor in Grammar. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
President’s speech on the occasion of the Independence Day of Ukraine (2020). [Промова Президента з нагоди Дня Незалежності України] Retrieved from www.president.gov.ua/news/promova-prezidenta-z-nagodi-dnya-nezalezhnosti-ukrayini-62953Google Scholar
Protsyk, І. (2016). Обсценна лексика в соціолекті українських футбольних фанатів. Типологія та функції мовних одиниць [Obscene vocabulary in the sociolect of Ukrainian football fans. Typology and Functions of Language Units], 1(5), 151–164.Google Scholar
Skinner, A. (2018). The slippery slope of dehumanizing language. The Conversation. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/the-slippery-slope-of-dehumanizing-language-97512Google Scholar
Smith, D. L., & Panaitiu, I. (2016). Apeing the human essence: Simianization as dehumanization. In Hund, Wulf D., Mills, Charles W., and Sebastiani, Silvia (eds.), Racism Analysis Yearbook, Vol 6: Apes, Gender, Class, and Race. Berlin: Lit Verlag.Google Scholar
Sokołowska, O. (2019). Detecting metaphor: What case forms may reveal about a conceptualization. Beyond Philology, 16(1), 77–94.Google Scholar
Sukhovii, O., & Hnatiuk, L. (2016). Кащeнізм як субкультуpа в укpаiнському інтepнeт-пpостоpі: мовні особливості. Актуальні питання суспільних наук та історії медицини [Kaschenism as a subculture in the Ukrainian Internet space: Linguistic features. Current Issues of Social Sciences and the History of Medicine] 4, 16–20.Google Scholar
Szilagyi, A. (2018). Dangerous metaphors: How dehumanizing rhetoric works. Dangerous Speech Project. Retrieved from https://dangerousspeech.org/dangerous-metaphors-how-dehumanizing-rhetoric-works/Google Scholar
Teteriuk, M. (2016). Between ‘the Russian World’ and ‘the Ukrainian Nation’: Kyiv Pride before and after Euromaidan. Retrieved from https://www.iwm.at/transit-online/between-the-russian-world-and-the-ukrainian-nation-kyiv-pride-before-and-after-euromaidan/Google Scholar
Vaes, J., Paladino, M. P., Castelli, L., Leyens, J. Ph., & Giovanazzi, A. (2003). On the behavioral consequences of infra-humanization: The implicit role of uniquely human emotions in intergroup relations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 1016–1034.Google Scholar
Utych, S. M. (2018). How dehumanization influences attitudes toward immigrants. Political Research Quarterly, 71(2), 440–452.Google Scholar
Zahnitko, A. P. (2018). Мовний простір граматики. Вінниця: ТОВ ‘Твор’ [Linguistic space of grammar. Vinnytsia: LLC Tvory].Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×