Gender Prejudice Is More Common In Languages With Grammatical Genders

By Emma Young Does the language that you speak influence what you think? And do languages that assign a gender to most nouns — such as French and Spanish — lead speakers to feel differently about women versus men, compared with languages that don’t — such as Chinese? Both questions have been hotly debated. But now a major new study, involving an analysis of millions of pages of text in 45 different languages from all over the world, concludes that gendered languages shape prejudice against women. Gendered languages, such as French and Spanish, Russian and Hindi, dictate that most nouns are male or female. For example, “the ball” is la pelota (female) in Spanish and le ballon (male) in French. In these languages, adjectives and verbs also change slightly depending on the gender of the noun. Then there’s a group of “natural gender” languages, in which nouns aren’t gendered, but pronouns do reflect gender (such as he and she in English, which belongs to this group.) Finally, there are genderless languages, in which a pronoun can refer to either gender, such as Chinese and Finnish. Earlier research has found that in countries where gendered languages are spoken, women earn lower wages and are less likely to succeed in politics. But researchers have questioned whether the nature of the language itself has anything to do with this. Perhaps, some have suggested, languages simply reflect differences in broader cultural attitudes to men and women....
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Gender Language Source Type: blogs