Masculine Generic Pronouns THERESA REDL SERIES
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Masculine generic pronouns MASCULINE GENERIC PRONOUNSInvestigating the processing THERESA REDL of an unintended gender cue MPI SERIES 162 THERESA REDL Masculine generic pronouns Investigating the processing of an unintended gender cue Theresa Redl The educational component of the doctoral training was provided by the International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Language Sciences. The graduate school is a joint initiative between the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and two partner institutes at Radboud University – the Centre for Language Studies, and the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour. The IMPRS curriculum, which is funded by the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science, ensures that each member receives interdisciplinary training in the language sciences and develops a well-rounded skill set in preparation for fulfilling careers in academia and beyond. More information can be found at www.mpi.nl/imprs. © 2020, Theresa Redl ISBN: 978-94-92910-20-2 Cover design: Irene Szankowsky Printed and bound by Ipskamp Printing Masculine generic pronouns Investigating the processing of an unintended gender cue Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen op gezag van de rector magnificus prof. dr. J.H.J.M. van Krieken, volgens besluit van het college van decanen in het openbaar te verdedigen op donderdag 21 januari 2021 om 12:30 uur precies door Theresa Redl geboren op 31 augustus 1991 te Wenen (Oostenrijk) Promotor: Prof. dr. Helen de Hoop Copromotoren: Dr. Peter J.F. de Swart Dr. Stefan L. Frank Manuscriptcommissie: Prof. dr. Jos M.A. Hornikx Prof. dr. Lisa von Stockhausen (Universität Duisburg-Essen, Duitsland) Prof. dr. Petra Hendriks (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) Dr. Laurel E. Brehm (Max Planck Instituut voor Psycholinguïstiek) Dr. Gerrit Jan Kootstra Masculine generic pronouns Investigating the processing of an unintended gender cue Doctoral thesis to obtain the degree of doctor from Radboud University Nijmegen on the authority of the Rector Magnificus prof. dr. J.H.J.M. van Krieken, according to the decision of the Council of Deans to be defended in public on Thursday January 21, 2021 at 12:30 hours by Theresa Redl born on August 31, 1991 in Vienna (Austria) Supervisor: Prof. dr. Helen de Hoop Co-supervisors: Dr. Peter J.F. de Swart Dr. Stefan L. Frank Doctoral Thesis Committee: Prof. dr. Jos M.A. Hornikx Prof. dr. Lisa von Stockhausen (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany) Prof. dr. Petra Hendriks (University of Groningen) Dr. Laurel E. Brehm (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics) Dr. Gerrit Jan Kootstra This research was supported by the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science, Munich, Germany. The research was conducted at the Centre for Language Studies at Radboud University as well as the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Table of Contents Chapter 1: General introduction .................................................................................. 9 Chapter 2: The processing of the Dutch masculine generic zijn 'his' across stereotype contexts: An eye-tracking study ................................................................................ 23 Chapter 3: The male bias of a masculine generic pronoun: Evidence from eye-tracking and sentence evaluation ............................................................................................. 47 Chapter 4: Masculine generic pronouns as a gender cue in generic statements ........... 75 Chapter 5: Gender-mismatching pronouns in context: The interpretation of possessive pronouns in Dutch and Limburgian ........................................................................... 93 Chapter 6: The male bias of a generically-intended personal pronoun in language processing ............................................................................................................... 105 Chapter 7: Summary and conclusions ...................................................................... 117 References .............................................................................................................. 131 Appendix ................................................................................................................ 147 Nederlandse samenvatting ....................................................................................... 217 Deutsche Zusammenfassung ................................................................................... 223 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................. 229 Curriculum Vitae .................................................................................................... 231 List of publications ................................................................................................. 232 MPI Series in Psycholinguistics .............................................................................. 233 Chapter 1: General introduction First sentences of dissertations vary greatly. Many dissertations open with blatant truisms (just like the one in front of you), some provide an example of the phenomenon that has been studied, others provide a definition, yet others ask a deeply meaningful question which may or may not be answered by the dissertation. In contrast, the summary a PhD candidate has to give during the defense does not allow for any variation regarding the first as well as the last sentence that has to be uttered. The Dutch doctorate regulations of Radboud University clearly state: 1. [De rector] geeft het woord aan de promovendus, die de … openingstekst uitspreekt. … Vervolgens geeft hij een samenvatting van maximaal tien minuten van de inhoud van de dissertatie. Hij sluit de samenvatting af met de woorden: “Na deze samenvatting van mijn proefschrift gegeven te hebben, geef ik het woord terug aan u, rector.” ‘[The Rector] invites the PhD candidate to say the opening words. Afterwards, he presents a summary lasting no more than ten minutes of the contents of the dissertation. He concludes the summary with the words: "Having presented this summary of my thesis, I return the floor to you, Rector."’ (Radboud University, n.d.) The research reported in this dissertation is dedicated to language use as in the example above, which the doctorate regulations of Radboud University abound with. This snippet of the regulations in (1) includes the masculine noun promovendus ‘PhD candidate’ as well as the masculine pronoun hij ‘he’, even though the rules apply to all PhD candidates regardless of their gender. This generic use of masculine words is a highly common practice in Dutch as well as in many other languages. The doctorate regulations also feature a reading instruction stating that “where it says ‘he’, one can usually also read ‘she’” (waar ‘hij’ staat, kan in de regel ook ‘zij’ worden gelezen, Radboud University, n.d.). This dissertation sets out to test whether what these instructions propose is easily possible. Do readers process these pronouns as they are intended, that is, as referring to persons of any gender? Or is ignoring the pronoun’s gender harder than the reading instruction suggests? The different grammatical genders within a language are often not functionally equivalent and the example in (1) illustrates that. The masculine gender constitutes the unmarked form – a sort of default – in the majority of languages distinguishing between feminine and masculine gender in one way or other (Aikhenvald, 2016; Hellinger & Bußmann, 2001b). Thus, when referring to one or multiple persons of unknown or 9 10 Chapter 1 unspecified gender or when referring to a group of mixed gender, masculine forms are used (Aikhenvald, 2016; Braun et al., 1998; Gygax et al., 2008; Hamilton, 1988). This phenomenon is usually referred to as generic masculines (Gabriel & Mellenberger, 2004; Garnham & Yakovlev, 2015; Irmen & Schumann, 2011) or masculine generics (Braun et al., 2005; Hamilton, 1988). In the second half of the 20th century, criticism of this practice of linguistically encoding men as the prototypical humans emerged in English-speaking countries (Silveira, 1980; Sontag, 1973) and was soon also voiced in the Netherlands (e.g., Romein-Verschoor, 1975) as well as in other non-English language areas (see for example Pusch, 1984, for German). Studies on this phenomenon of encoding men as the prototypical human, particularly in English, soon followed and their results questioned the genericity of masculine generics. These studies made use of various methods, such as story writing (e.g., Moulton et al., 1978), the description of mental imagery (e.g., Gastil, 1990; Hamilton, 1988), the evaluation of sentences featuring masculine generics (e.g., MacKay & Fulkerson, 1979) and picture selection (e.g., Wilson, 1978). Crucially, these early studies on masculine generics made use of offline methods and thus uncovered an offline male bias. These studies therefore found that a male bias was present after the sentence or text in question was processed and an additional task had to be performed. Conversely, these studies do not tell us whether a male bias emerges already during – and as a consequence of – language processing, that is, online; the male bias in an offline task could also be a consequence of the task itself (e.g., re-evaluating the processed sentence in order to write a story) instead of a consequence of online processing. The question must not only be if masculine generics induce a male bias, but