Blog #1 "What's Gender Got to Do with Grammar?"

The article by Suzanne Romaine was rather informative about the notion of grammar within different languages. I had always heard about the masculine or feminine forms in language but I never took the time to figure out why they existed. Two of the three languages I studied (Japanese, Hmong) didn't contain gender while Spanish did. I remember in one of my Spanish classes where we had asked the instructor why a certain word was masculine when we obviously perceived it as feminine, but she didn't have an answer.

I had always wondered why ships, cars and other similar things were referred to as female. You can imagine my reaction when I read that it was because they were objects that were owned and controlled by men, like women are supposed to be (in a male-dominated society). Did it surprise me? Not really. Did it make me mad? I think frustration is a better word for me to use. Learning that the more disastrous aspects of nature and wildness were also feminized just added to my frustration. Initially, some could just see it and brush it off as coincidence, but from what I read, it seems like it wasn't. A part of me thinks that it's horrible that these destructive forces are associated with women but then another part of me laughs and thinks "well of course, women are a force to be reckoned with!" and it doesn't seem quite a bad.

One of the parts I found most interesting dealt with the French and how they referred to women who were involved in jobs where the title was masculine. What would you do in that situation? They had the option of saying female officer and whatnot, but that must get tiresome. Or they could coin new titles that implies a woman. I know in English, most of the time we don't seem to have that problem since a name is included in the occupational title of that individual. Then again, a name could be deceiving. I've seen some men named Shannon, so how are we to know who they are? Another dilemma I know of is between the words author and authoress. Some women prefer to be referred to as an author, because they think if it's good enough for men, then it is good for them as well! Others prefer to go by authoress because they as a woman, accomplished something, not as an author. This also reminds of a professor who had us refer to her in her maiden name, not her married name. Her reason? She earned her Ph.D, not her husband. While the article was very insightful, now I know I am going to look at everything around me and wonder why it is referred to something masculine or feminine. Of course, that's what Linguistics does, it makes you think twice about a language.