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Comprehension of Gender-Neutral Forms and the Pseudo Abschlussarbeit zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades MASTER OF SCIENCE LINGUISTICS Comprehension of Gender-neutral forms and the pseudo-generic masculine in German: a visual world eye-tracking study – ‘It goes without saying’ that everyone is included? Erstgutachter: Dr. phil. Titus Raban von der Malsburg Zweitgutachterin: Prof. Dr. Maria Sol Lago Huvelle Universität Potsdam Name: Christin Schütze Humanwissenschaften Datum der Abgabe: 13.06.2020 Department Linguistik M. Sc. Linguistik Wintersemester 2019/20 – Sommersemester 2020 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License: Attribution 4.0 International. This does not apply to quoted content from other authors. To view a copy of this license visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published online on the Publication Server of the University of Potsdam: https://doi.org/10.25932/publishup-48415 https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-484157 Table of Contents 1. Linguistics and Genus – Society and Gender: Language and the Battlefield 1 1.1 Gender Linguistics: Connected in Socio-Political Dimensions – Merged by Feminism 1 1.2 Language Planning, Reform, Change: Questioning the Status Quo 5 1.3 Terminology and Re-Labeling for Clarification 9 1.4 Psycholinguistic Research of a Language-Society-Phenomenon: Motivations and Questions 14 2. Genus and Gender Complexities and Strategies under Grammar Aspects 17 2.1 German Genus System and Generic(s) 17 2.1.1 Genus Forms and Gender Impacts 17 2.1.2 The (Specific) Trouble with the Masculine 24 2.1.3 Strategies and Promoted Solutions towards a more Inclusive Language 29 2.1.3.1 “Engender” with Gender-balanced Alternatives: Femininisation, Pair Forms, Splitting 29 2.1.3.2 “Degender” with Gender-neutral Alternatives: Neutralisation, Word Formation, Paraphrases 32 2.1.3.3 “Re(interpret)-Gender” or “X(exit)-Gender” with other Variants 35 2.2 Language-Gender Interface: Grammatical Genus Meets Gender 36 2.2.1 Stereotypes and Social Roles: Personal and Role Nouns as Socio-Linguistic Catalysts? 37 2.2.2 (Non-)Binary Systems: More Genders than Grammar Can Mark? 40 2.2.3 A Note on the Inability to Tell Genus from Gender (“Genus-Sexus-Nexus”) 43 2.3 Research hitherto: Evidence on Genera, Generics and Gender-Fair Language 44 2.4 Interim Conclusion: Psycholinguistic Reality of Genus and Gender Marking 54 3. R eferentiality of Gender: Experiment al Evidence on Genericity and Gender-Neutrality 57 3.1 Eye Tracking in the Visual World: Methodology and Mechanisms 57 3.2 Conditions and Propositions 61 3.3 Perceiving Genus and Gender: Materials 63 3.3.1 Auditory Stimuli: Sentences, Structure, and Scenarios 63 3.3.1.1 Experimental Items 63 3.3.1.2 Fillers 65 3.3.2 Visual Stimuli: Protagonist and Group Images 66 3.3.3 Materialisation: Recordings and Image Selection 68 3.4 Procedure 70 3.4.1 Instructions and Debriefing 70 3.4.2 Item and Experimental Design 71 3.4.3 Set-Up 72 3.5 Measurements on Interest Areas and Regions of Interest 74 3.6 Data Collection 75 3.6.1 Participants 75 3.6.2 Questionnaire 75 3.6.3 Rating Norms of Stereotypicality 75 3.7 Predictions 76 3.7.1 Fixations 76 3.7.2 Responses and Accuracy 78 3.7.3 Behavioural Data and Fixations: Interactions 79 3.7.4 Habituation and Time Course 80 3.7.5 Reaction Times 81 3.7.6 Other Variables 82 3.8 Analyses and Results 83 3.8.1 Participant Data 83 3.8.2 Preparation and Prerequisites: Variables, Data Description, and Programming Environment 83 3.8.3 Analyses of Behavioural Measures: Responses and Reaction Times 86 3.8.3.1 Reaction Times 86 3.8.3.2 Responses to Interest Areas: Group Referent Image Decisions 89 3.8.3.3 Practice Items, Fillers and Comprehension Questions 93 3.8.4 Analysis of Eye Movements: Fixation Proportions and Divergence of Looks 93 3.8.4.1 Eye-Tracking Analysis of Divergence I: Critical Gendered Noun RoI1 96 3.8.4.2 Eye-Tracking Analysis of Divergence II: Referent Identification Question RoI2 100 3.8.5 Comparative Analyses of Variables: Causalities, Comparisons, and Interactions 101 3.8.6 Exploratory Analyses 102 3.8.6.1 Participant Acquisition Revisited: Peer Groups 102 3.8.6.2 Stereotypicality and Prestige 103 3.8.6.3 Individual Differences: Outliers Among Subjects and Items 104 4. The Comprehension of G enus and Gender: Closing Remarks 105 4.1 Results 105 4.1.1 Generic Functionality of Masculine vs. Gender-neutral Nominal Personal Reference 105 4.1.2 Female Presence 108 4.1.3 Variables and Factors 108 4.1.4 Analysis 109 4.2 Limitations or: Chances for Future Work 109 4.2.1 Participants and Sample 109 4.2.2 Design, Task, and Materials 110 4.2.3 Prospective Designs 114 4.3 Implications 115 4.4 In Conclusion 118 5. List of References 123 5.1 Resources 123 5.2 Bibliography 124 6. List of Table s 127 7. Appendix 136 7.1 Stimulus Materials 136 A1 Experimental Items 136 A1.1 List of Nouns for Critical Items 164 A1.2 List of Gender-Neutral Noun Types 165 A2 Practice Items and Fillers 152 A2.1 List of Nouns for Filler Items 166 A3 Translations of Selected Materials 163 B1 Images of Protagonists 167 B1 Images of Sets 168 7.2 Further Materials of the Experiment 169 C1 Instructions (translated) 169 C2 Questionnaire 171 C3 Symbolic Orthography to Gender 172 C4 R Code 174 D1 Experimental Set-Up 175 D2 Item Structure 175 D3 Experiment Builder Properties & Experiment Builder Graph 175 7.3 Results, Plots, and Figures of the Experiment 178 E1-E16.2 178 7.4 F Summary – Zusammenfassung 189 8. Declaration of Originality 192 9. Acknowledgements 193 Abbreviations “gen”Masc. “generic” masculine fem. feminine masc. masculine neutr. neutral GN Gender-neutral SG singular PL plural coll.SG collective singular nomin.Part nominalised participle subst. nominalisation (“Substantivierung”) person compounds with “-person” RefIDQ referent identification question CQ comprehension question PRO protagonist RoI region of interest (in a sentence) IA area of interest (in a visual display) RT reaction time (all)♂ (all-)male Gender (all)♀ (all-)female Gender ♂♀ mixed Gender w female (“weiblich”) m male (“männlich”) d diverse ET eye-tracking VW visual world 1. Linguistics and Genus – Society and Gender – Language and the Battlefield An idiom from the English language expresses the heart of the debate on non-sexist language best: when it goes without saying it is implied, and if women are implied in a masculine expression of reference that should include anyone, if they are “meant” as well, is the issue this work is de- voted to. The popularity this opinion enjoys draws on the grammatically conventional generic func- tion of forms that are identical with those marked for masculinity. Does it literally not have to be mentioned, is it without stating explicitly that women* are involved as referents in discourse? After this assumption has been challenged by various psycholinguistic studies, an experiment using eye- tracking in a visual world setting conducted for this thesis shall weigh in its contribution and go to- wards testing distinct forms in German with respect to their generic functionality. 1.1 Gender Linguistics: Connected in Socio- P olitical Dimensions – Merged by Feminism The end of the second decade of the 21st century, especially the past two years, seem to have hold some achievements of the feminist agenda – achievements to increase Gender equity and to min- imise discrimination, be it structural sexism or any kind of violence, against women* across all areas. Feminism, the strive for equality of humans of all Genders, dates back to times when in what has become known as the first wave of feminism, the right to vote was fought for by the suf- fragettes. The women*'s movement then demanded and fought for equal opportunities at the work place, tackling social roles that held women* inferior to men in the second wave 1. Now, in a third wave, feminism aims to fight on a more intersectional level, and understands the mechanisms of discrimination as intertwined with Gender identification, sexual orientation, racism and classism, but most core issues are still being debated, discriminatory language being one of these. In 2018/19, an acknowledgement long fought for has been conceded by the German government when the law was passed that a third Gender category named diverse next to male or female has become a legal option to choose2. Another struggle finally found its successful end in a law allow- ing non-heterosexual couples the right to marriage. From my perspective, some media represent- atives have hesitantly begun to stop framing the persistent murdering of women* as “relationship drama” or “love / family tragedy”, and the term “femicide” (homicides on specifically women* – stat- istically an immense thread in a female* person’s life3) as well as “sexualised” instead of “sexual” violence appeared publicly, following an outrage of female readers and activists because of the 1 Throughout this paper, women* and descriptions of femaleness will be marked with an asterisk. This has become the common orthografic contrivance to symbolically express a) that womanhood is a construct on the basis of which people are categorised, and that b) other people (the “beams” of the “star”) than those read as being female belong to the social category, too (including a female, trans, inter, queer, and non- binary community, summarised in the acronym FLINT* or LGBTIQ*, cf. "Leitfaden AG Feministisch Sprachhandeln" (2014: 25) in Nübling & Kotthoff 2018: 219). The concept of Gender will be capitalised (unless quoted) to point out the umbrella term and construct it is – an orthographic means to refer to a category that should be treated as a constructed scheme in order to emphasise that these are ultimately concepts adduced to grasp complex coherencies.
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