Gender Across Languages: The linguistic representation of women and men. Volume 2: 10 (IMPACT: Studies in Language, Culture and Society) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9027218439 ISBN 13: 9789027218438

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2002

Synopsis

This is the second of a three-volume comprehensive reference work on “Gender across Languages”, which provides systematic descriptions of various categories of gender (grammatical, lexical, referential, social) in 30 languages of diverse genetic, typological and socio-cultural backgrounds. Among the issues discussed for each language are the following: What are the structural properties of the language that have an impact on the relations between language and gender? What are the consequences for areas such as agreement, pronominalisation and word-formation? How is specification of and abstraction from (referential) gender achieved in a language? Is empirical evidence available for the assumption that masculine/male expressions are interpreted as generics? Can tendencies of variation and change be observed, and have alternatives been proposed for a more equal linguistic treatment of women and men? This volume (and the previous two volumes) will provide the much-needed basis for explicitly comparative analyses of gender across languages. All chapters are original contributions and follow a common general outline developed by the editors. The book contains rich bibliographical and indexical material.Languages of Volume 2: Chinese, Dutch, Finnish, Hindi, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, Vietnamese, Welsh.

About this title

Synopsis

This volume systematically investigates the linguistic representation of women and men in 30 languages of very different structural and socio-cultural backgrounds. Fundamental to the project is the hypothesis that the formal and functional manifestations of gender in the area of human reference follow general, and perhaps universal principles in the world's languages. This text outlines these principles and specifies the theoretical and empirical founations on which statements about gender structures can be made. In addition it outlines gender-related tendencies of variation and change, and - where applicable - language reform, seeking to identify the ways in which the structural/linguistic prerequisites interact with the respective social, cultural and political conditions that determine the relationships between women and men in a community. It focuses on personal nouns and pronouns, which have emerged as a central issue in debates about language and gender.

Edition details

• Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 9027218439
• ISBN 13: 9789027218438
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 362
• Editor: Hellinger Marlis, Bußmann Hadumod