Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > Altering male-dominant representations

Electronic data

  • Sato et al 2016_nominal

    Rights statement: The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Journal of Language and Social Psychology, ? (?), 2016, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2016 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the Journal of Language and Social Psychology page: http://jls.sagepub.com/ on SAGE Journals Online: http://online.sagepub.com/

    Accepted author manuscript, 259 KB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Links

Text available via DOI:

View graph of relations

Altering male-dominant representations: a study on nominalized adjectives and participles in first and second language German

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
Close
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>12/2016
<mark>Journal</mark>Journal of Language and Social Psychology
Issue number6
Volume35
Number of pages19
Pages (from-to)667-685
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date19/01/16
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

The generic use of masculine plural forms in grammatical gender languages has been criticized for activating unequal gender representations that are male dominant. The present study examined whether the recently introduced gender-neutral forms of nominalized adjectives and participles in German provide references that induce more balanced representations. We used cross-linguistic differences as a means to illustrate the flexibility of the gender representation system and investigated both native and nonnative (French–German bilinguals) speakers of German. Although a masculine bias persisted when participants read role nouns in the masculine plural form, the study suggests that the usage of nominalized forms can attenuate this male bias, even for nonnative speakers. The results of the study provide further support for the use of gender-neutral language.