Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T23:10:59.289Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Jean does the dishes while Marie fixes the car: a qualitative and quantitative study of social gender in French syntax articles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2019

Célia Richy  and
Heather Burnett Open the ORCID record for Heather Burnett [Opens in a new window]
Célia Richy*
Affiliation:
Queen Mary University of London
Heather Burnett
Affiliation:
Université de Paris, LLF, CNRS
*
*Corresponding author: Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article addresses the question of gender bias observed in constructed examples of French syntax articles. Drawing our inspiration from Macaulay and Brice (1997) and Pabst et al. (2018)’s studies of English, we investigate the way women and men are depicted in constructed examples in syntax articles in French. We looked at grammatical functions, thematic roles and lexical choices and found a strong male bias in the use of gendered noun phrases (i.e. more references to men than to women; men are more likely to be in a subject position as well as being referred to via pronouns, and more likely to be agents and experiencers). Furthermore, women and men are not related to the same lexical choices. Besides, since French is a grammatical gender language where masculine gender can also be intended as gender neutral, we designed a second study to investigate masculine marked noun phrases (ambiguous masculines, AMs). When we compared AM noun phrases to female and male arguments in terms of grammatical functions and thematic roles, we found that, in production, they were different than true masculines. We discuss the implications of our results for the meaning of ‘gender neutral masculines’ and for practices anchoring gender discrimination.

Type
Article
Information
Journal of French Language Studies , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , March 2020 , pp. 47 - 72
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019

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.)

Footnotes

†

We thank Anne Abeillé, Olivier Bonami, Pascal Gygax, Barbara Hemforth, Shiri Lev Ari, Marie-Claude Paris, Anna Thornton, audiences at Université Paris Diderot, SSLP Berlin and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

References

REFERENCES

Abbou, J. (2018). Les genres décrits n°2. Le genre exemplaire. Bestaire des exemples et contre-exemples du genre dans les grammaires. URL: https://www.revue-glad.org/1042Google Scholar
Abbou, J. (2011). L’antisexisme linguistique dans les brochures libertaires: pratiques d’écriture et métadiscours. PhD thesis, Université Aix-Marseille I.Google Scholar
Baider, F., and Papaioannou, A. (2014). «Abdel prépare une quiche-lorraine». Les avatars des rapports sociaux d’ethnie, de sexe et de classe en didactique de FLS. Genres Langues et Pouvoirs. Cahiers de linguistique, 40(1): 137–153.Google Scholar
Baider, F. H., Khaznadar, E., and Moreau, T. (2007). Les enjeux de la parité linguistique. Nouvelles Questions Féministes, 26(3): 4–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barrett, R. (2014). The Emergence of the Unmarked. In: Zimman, L., Davis, J. and Raclaw, J. (eds), Queer Excursions: Retheorizing Binaries in Language, Gender, and Sexuality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.195–223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baayen, R. H., Davidson, D. J. and Bates, D. M. (2008). Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language, 59(4): 390–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bates, D., Maechler, M., Bolker, B., Walker, S., et al. (2014). lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using eigen and s4. R package version, 1(7):1–23.Google Scholar
Bergvall, V. L. (1996). Humpty Dumpty does syntax: through the looking-glass, and what Alice found there. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 14(2): 433–443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyce, V., von der Malsburg, T., Poppels, T. and Levy, R. (2019). Female gender is consistently under-expressed in pronoun production and under-inferred in comprehension. In: Pancheva, R. and Iskarous, K. (eds), 93th Annual Meeting of the Linguistics Society of America. New York, NY: Linguistic Society of America.Google Scholar
Brauer, M., and Landry, M. (2008). Un ministre peut-il tomber enceinte? L’impact du générique masculin sur les représentations mentales. L’Année Psychologique, 108(2): 243–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brennan, Susan E. (1995). Centering attention in discourse. Language and Cognitive Processes, 10(2): 137–167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bucholtz, M. (2004). Language, gender, and sexuality. In: Finegan, E. and Rickford, J. R. (eds), Language in the USA. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 410–429.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burnett, H. and Richy, C. (2019). Understanding gender bias in pronoun production using formal semantics, computational psycholinguistics and feminism. Presentation at The Future of Artificial Intelligence, Language, Gender, Technology, at Cambridge University, May, 2019.Google Scholar
Cameron, D. (1997). Theoretical debates in feminist linguistics: Questions of sex and gender. In: Wodak, R. (ed), Gender and Discourse. London: Sage, pp. 21–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chamberland, L. and Lebreton, C. (2012). Réflexions autour de la notion d’homophobie: succès politique, malaises conceptuels et application empirique. Nouvelles Questions Féministes, 31(1): 27–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chatard, A., Guimont, S., and Martinot, D. (2005). Impact de la féminisation lexicale des professions sur l’auto-efficacité des élèves: une remise en cause de l’universalisme masculin? L’Année Psychologique, 105(2): 249–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Connell, R. W. (1998). Masculinities and globalization. Men and masculinities, 1(1): 3–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corbett, G. (1991). Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eckert, P. and McConnell-Ginet, S. (2013). Language and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fassin, E. (2006). Le genre aux États-Unis et en France. Agora Débats/jeunesses, 41(1): 12–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Formanowicz, M., Roessel, J., Suitner, C., Maass, A. (2017). Verbs as linguistic markers of agency: The social side of grammar. European Journal of Social Psychology, 47(5): 566–579.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gabriel, U. and Gygax, P. (2016). Gender and linguistic sexism. In Giles, H. and Maass, A. (eds), Language as Social Action: Vol. 21. Advances in Intergroup Communication. New York, NY: Peter Lang, pp. 177–192.Google Scholar
Garnham, A., Gabriel, U., Sarrasin, O., Gygax, P. and Oakhill, J. (2012). Gender representation in different languages and grammatical marking on pronouns: when beauticians, musicians, and mechanics remain men. Discourse Processes, 49(6): 481–500.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaspard, F., Servan-Schreiber, C. and Le Gall, A. (1992). Au pouvoir citoyennes ! Liberté, Egalité, Parité. Paris: Le Seuil.Google Scholar
Gordon, P. C., Grosz, B. J. and Gilliom, L. A. (1993). Pronouns, names, and the centering of attention in discourse. Cognitive Science, 17(3): 311–347.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grevisse, M and Goose, A. (2008). Le bon usage : grammaire française. (14e édition). Brussels: De Boeck and Larcier.Google Scholar
Grosz, B. J., Joshi, A. K., and Weinstein, S. (1983). Providing a unified account of definite noun phrases in discourse. In: Proceedings of the 21st annual meeting on Association for Computational Linguistics. Cambridge, MA: Association for Computational Linguistics, pp. 44–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gygax, P., Gabriel, U., Lévy, A., Pool, E., Grivel, M. and Pedrazzini, E. (2012). The masculine form and its competing interpretations in French: When linking grammatically masculine role names to female referents is difficult. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 24(4): 395–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gygax, P., Gabriel, U., Sarrasin, O., Oakhill, J. and Garnham, A. (2008). Generically intended, but specifically interpreted: When beauticians, musicians, and mechanics are all men. Language and Cognitive Processes, 23(3): 464–485.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gygax, P., Sato, S., Öttl, A. and Gabriel, U. (2019). The masculine form in grammatically gendered languages and its multiple interpretations: a challenge for our cognitive system. Manuscript submitted for publication to Cognitive Linguistics.Google Scholar
Hegarty, P., Mollin, S., Foels, R. (2016). Binomial word order and social status. In: Giles, H. and Maass, A. (eds), Advances in Intergroup Communication. Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 119–135.Google Scholar
Hockett, C. F. (1958). A Course in Modern Linguistics. New York: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Houdebine-Gravaud, A. M. (1995). Des femmes dans la langue et les discours. Annales de Normandie, 26(1): 385–398.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, D. E. (2009). Getting off the GoldVarb standard: Introducing Rbrul for mixed-effects variable rule analysis. Language and Linguistics Compass, 3(1): 359–383.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kehler, A., and Rohde, H. (2015). Pronominal reference and pragmatic enrichment: a Bayesian account. Proceedings of the 37th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Pasadena CA, pp. 1063–1068.Google Scholar
Khaznadar, E. (2007). Le non-genre académique: doctrine de la domination masculine en France. Nouvelles Questions Féministes, 26(3): 25–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kiesling, S. F. (2009). Fraternity men: Variation and discourses of masculinity. In: Coupland, N. and Jaworski, A. (eds), The New Sociolinguistics Reader. London: Macmillan, pp. 187–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, J. F. (2014). Gender representation in Hong Kong primary school ELT textbooks–a comparative study. Gender and Education, 26(4): 356–376.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, J. F. and Collins, P. (2010). Construction of gender: A comparison of Australian and Hong Kong English language textbooks. Journal of Gender Studies, 19(2), 121–137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewandowski, M. (2014). Gender stereotyping in EFL grammar textbooks. A diachronic approach. Linguistik online, 68(6): 88–99.Google Scholar
Macaulay, M., and Brice, C. (1997). Don’t touch my projectile: gender bias and stereotyping in syntactic examples. Language, 73(4): 798–825.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malsburg, T., von der, Poppels, T. and Levy, R.P. (2018). Implicit gender bias in linguistic descriptions for expected events: The cases of the 2016 US and 2017 UK election. Under review at Psychological Science. Preprint available at https://psyarxiv.com/n5ywrGoogle Scholar
Marslen-Wilson, W., Levy, W. and Tyler, L.K. (1982). Producing interpretable discourse: The establishment and maintenance of reference. In: Jarvella, R. and Klein, W. (eds), Speech, Place, and Action. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
McConnell-Ginet, S. (2013). Gender and its relation to sex: the myth of ‘natural’ gender. In: Corbett, G. (ed.), The Expression of Gender. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 3–38.Google Scholar
McConnell-Ginet, S. (2014). Meaning-making and ideologies of gender and sexuality. In: Ehrlich, S., Meyerhoff, M. and Holmes, J. (eds), The Handbook of Language, Gender, and Sexuality. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, pp. 316–334.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michard, C. (2001). Le sexe en linguistique : sémantique ou zoologie ? Paris: L’Harmattan.Google Scholar
Michard, C. and Ribery, C. (1982). Sexisme et sciences humaines: pratique linguistique du rapport de sexage. Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille.Google Scholar
Misersky, J.et al. (2014). Norms on the gender perception of role nouns in Czech, English, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, and Slovak. Behavior Research Methods, 46(3): 841–871.Google ScholarPubMed
Pabst, K.et al. (2018). Gender bias in linguistics textbooks. Paper presented at LSA 2018 annual meeting.Google Scholar
Postal, P. M. (2003). Policing the content of linguistic examples. Language, 79(1): 182–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rich, A. (1980). Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence. Signs, 5(4): 631–660.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richy, C. (2018). Jean does the dishes while Marie fixes the car. The distribution of social genders within constructed examples in French syntactic articles: a quantitative and qualitative study MA Dissertation, Université Paris Diderot.Google Scholar
Rignault, S., and Richert, P. (1997). La représentation des hommes et des femmes dans les livres scolaires. Rapport au Premier Ministre. Paris: La Documentation française.Google Scholar
Sabatier, M. (2012). Does productivity decline after promotion? The case of French academia. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 74(6): 886–902.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinigaglia-Amadio, S. (2010). Place et représentation des femmes dans les manuels scolaires en France: la persistance des stéréotypes sexistes. Nouvelles Questions Féministes, 29(2): 46–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stevenson, R., Crawley, R., and Kleinman, D. (1994). Thematic roles, focusing and the representation of events. Language and Cognitive Processes, 9(4): 519–548.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sunderland, J. (2004). Gendered Discourses. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tarrayo, V. N. (2014). Gendered word (or world): Sexism in Philippine preschool English language textbooks. Journal of English Language Teaching, 4(2): 25–32.Google Scholar
Tisserant, P., and Wagner, A. L. (2008). Place des stéréotypes et des discriminations dans les manuels scolaires. Rapport réalisé pour le compte de la Haute Autorité de Lutte contre les Discriminations et pour l’Égalité.Google Scholar
Varikas, E. (2004). «Choses importantes et accessoires»: Expérience singulière et historicité du genre. Tumultes, 23: 61–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar