888. This week we take a fascinating look at how highly gendered languages are dealing with the drive to become more inclusive. Plus, we look at the differences between "simple" and "simplistic" and "backward" and "backwards."
888. This week we take a fascinating look at how highly gendered languages are dealing with the drive to become more inclusive. Plus, we look at the differences between "simple" and "simplistic" and "backward" and "backwards."
Transcript: https://grammar-girl.simplecast.com/episodes/how-gendered-languages-are-changing-jugopop
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References for the gendered language segment by Valerie Fridland:
Braun, F., Sczesny, S., & Stahlberg, D. (2005). Cognitive Effects of Masculine Generics in German: An Overview of Empirical Findings. Communications (Sankt Augustin), 30(1), 1-21.
Carreiras, M., Garnham, A., Oakhill, J., & Cain, K. (1996). The use of stereotypical gender information in constructing a mental model: evidence from English and Spanish. The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. A, Human experimental psychology, 49(3), 639–663.
DeFranza, D., Mishra, H., & Mishra, A. (2020). How language shapes prejudice against women: An examination across 45 world languages. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 119(1), 7–22.
Eilers, S., Tiffin-Richards, S. P., & Schroeder, S. (2018). Individual differences in children’s pronoun processing during reading: Detection of incongruence is associated with higher reading fluency and more regressions. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 173, 250-267.
Stahlberg, D., Braun, F., Irmen, L., & Sczesny, S. (2007). Representation of the sexes in language. In K. Fiedler (Ed.), Social communication. A volume in the series Frontiers of Social Psychology.163-187.
Moehlman, Lara. (2018) Can Hebrew Be Gender Neutral? https://momentmag.com/can-hebrew-be-gender-neutral/. Accessed 8.7.2022.
Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty, and you can think of me as your friendly guide to the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff.
Today, we’re going to talk about languages that have more gender than English, about the difference between “simple” and “simplistic,” and the difference between “backward” and “backwards.”
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He Said, She Said: Does language make women invisible?
When you hear a sentence like, “A soldier must be able to count on her fellow soldiers,” what strikes you most? Some of you might think the pronoun feels off since it doesn’t follow the old English rule of using the generic "he" when gender is unspecified. But studies have shown the primary reason this sentence strikes you as odd is probably more about the clash between the underlying gendered concept of who we expect soldiers to be (men) and the gender of the pronoun (she). For example, research shows that when people come across something like a mismatch between a pronoun and a stereotypically gendered role (like that of a nurse or soldier), their brains can actually have a little more trouble processing speech or text compared to how easily they can do it when pronouns do match gender expectations.
So, it is not surprising that there's been a lot of attention over the past few years on making language, and our gendered views about social roles, less biased. And we may hear about problems or objections in English, but it's even more interesting to think about how people are trying to meet the even greater challenges in languages that have grammatical gender, like French or Hebrew, where it is impossible to have a sentence without pervasive gender marking and where change can feel like an attack on cultural and linguistic identity.
Carrying the masculine mark
People in favor of gender-inclusive forms point out that many languages, including widely spoken ones like English, Russian, or the Romance languages, prioritize male forms when the gender of a person or animal is unknown or isn't specified. This includes things like the generic "he" so often used in English in the past, but also includes things like always defaulting to the male marked forms as the "basic" form in languages that have grammatical gender. For example, if a mixed group of people includes even just one man, in Hebrew, you use the masculine plural for “friends,” "chaverim" (versus the feminine "chaverot"), and in German, you use the masculine plural "studenten" (versus the feminine "studentin").
Another issue in grammatically gendered languages like French, Hebrew, or German is that all nouns, animate or not, belong to a gendered category — they're either masculine or feminine (or, sometimes, neuter). This category then determines what form of the word you use and the form of any modifying adjectives or articles.
So, for instance, saying “the brave soldier” in French is “le soldat courageux,” where both "le" and "courageux" are masculine forms to agree with the masculine noun, “soldat.” And, in most such languages, you use the male forms when gender is unknown or mixed. For example, in German, when you talk about a female boss, you would refer to her as "bossin," the feminine form. But when you are talking about a generic or unknown boss, you use the masculine form, "boss."
All this sets up the potential for people to think more about men since the masculine forms are mentally activated over and over again since most languages use male forms as the "neutral" or root forms. And, where these masculine generic forms appear, it is always correct to interpret them as referring to men, but it's only sometimes correct to interpret them as referring to women, which creates a bias toward thinking more about men in these contexts.
As a result, non-males are simply less visible, and people imagine them less often when they think about jobs or roles that have masculine nouns as their names. And research suggests this does make a difference in how people think about who does what. For example, one study showed that participants estimated that fewer women were involved in an occupation (or attended a meeting for a profession) when male words were used (e.g., the masculine form of "geophysicist") as opposed to when inclusive words were used (like those using both masculine and feminine words for "geophysicist").
How can languages become less gendered?
Given that there is empirical evidence that linguistic gendering can impact who we imagine, small changes can make a difference in how we think about who is the “norm.” Some strategies that have been adopted in languages other than English include alternating between male and female forms for generic references (much like people sometimes alternate between "he" and "she" in English), and using gender neutral terms. For example, new forms have been created in Hebrew and German by combining male and female markers (e.g., "chaverimot" for a mixed group of friends or "studentenin" for a group of students).
Though people don't always welcome reform efforts, the history of language is rife with changes despite strong beliefs about what it “should” look like. In fact, centuries ago, English also had grammatical gender, but, as shifts in the way we stressed syllables caused some types of words to lose their endings, we lost those gender markings. But English did not just survive, it thrived, becoming one of the most powerful and widely spoken languages in the world – all achieved in the wake of drastic changes and in the absence of gender marking.
Of course, claims of awkwardness and the idea that new forms aren't grammatically proper often precede major shifts in language, but the test of time – and the needs of speakers – almost always win out in the end. You just need to look to other changes that have happened over time that introduced slightly more "clunky" phrasing, such as the rise of periphrastic "do" that changed “I think not” to “I do not think,” to realize that what we regard as the “beautiful symmetry” of language has in fact always been in a state of flux. It will be interesting to watch how these changes continue to develop — in English and especially in languages with more complicated built-in gender.
That segment was written by Valerie Fridland, who is a professor of linguistics at the University of Nevada in Reno and the author of a forthcoming language book called "Like, Literally, Dude" about all the speech habits we love to hate. You can find her at valeriefridland.com or on Twitter at @FridlandValerie.
Vicki K. from South Dakota notes that she often hears designers on HGTV say "simplistic" instead of "simple," as in "The modern room was designed to be sleek and simplistic." She asks, "That's not right, is it?"
No, it's not right. At least, it's not right if they are trying to say something good about the design.
"Simplistic" means that something is oversimplified or lacking something important. For example, if I were to say that "affect" is a verb and "effect" is a noun, and I didn't talk about the exceptions, that would be a simplistic explanation. I left out important details—the exceptions.
To say the room was designed to be sleek and simple means their room is clean, unadorned, or not overdone. That's clearly what the designers mean when they're talking about their work.
In this context, "simple" is the word you want, not "simplistic." Thanks for the question, Vicki.
And I found some interesting things when I was looking at the origin of the two words. An archaic meaning of "simple" was a medicine containing a single ingredient, specifically a medicinal herb. Here's an example from 1888: "Cordials..were kept by the lady of the house among her simples." And a "simplist" ("ist") was a person who made these medicines. A simplist made simples. "Simplest" was essentially another name for an herbalist.
And then there's also an obsolete unrelated insult that was to say someone needs to be "cut for the simples." In that case, "simples" was jokingly used to refer to a medical condition that made you foolish, stupid, or simple. And the "cut" part referred to the medical practice of bloodletting. So the idea was that the doctors would do some bloodletting to cure you from the simples. I think we should revive that one! They need to be cut for the simples.
It can be really fun to look through obsolete meanings of words!
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'Backward' versus 'Backwards'
Our second quick and dirty tip is the difference between "backward" and "backwards" because it came up in my writing this week.
These words can be adjectives and adverbs, so you can say, “Squiggly jumped backward when Aardvark shouted, 'Boo!'”—that’s using "backward" as an adverb. It's describing the way Squiggly is moving, the same way you might say he jumped frantically or jumped high.
And you can say, “Grammar Girl wishes her Xbox had backward compatibility,”—that’s using "backward" as an adjective. It's describing the type of compatibility I wish I had, the same way you might say a fabulous couple has perfect compatibility.
Adjectives: 'Backward' and 'backwards'
As an adjective — in that "backward compatibility" way — Garner's Modern English Usage says only "backward" is allowed. And a Google Ngram search, which shows how often words are used in the books included in the Google Books database, shows that "backwards" as an adjective is almost nonexistent in both American English and British English.
I do have to say I've seen it quite a bit online, as in "backwards compatibility," but you know, that's online. If you want to write properly for your job or for schoolwork or just for life, stick with "backward" for the adjective.
Adverbs: 'Backward' and 'backwards'
Now when we get to the adverb, it's a different story. Both "backward" and "backwards" are correct. You can say either "Squiggly jumped backward" or "Squiggly jumped backwards." The big difference is between British English and American English, although it's not as stark as some differences I've seen.
Again, using a Google Ngram search to measure usage, as an adverb, "backwards" is ~1.7x more common in British English, while "backward" as an adverb is almost 3x more common in American English.
Also, I can find both spellings on the British BBC website, but "backwards" seems far more common, as in this headline: Ex-soldier Wayne Ingram walks 70 miles backwards for spinal charity. Good job, Wayne! And I can find "backwards" on the New York Times website, but "backward" is far more common.
So "backward" is the more American choice, and "backwards" is the more British choice, but you will find both in both languages.
The way I remember that "backward" is the word in American English, is to remind myself that Americans like shortcuts. For example, I’m willing to bet we eat in our cars more often than British people do. So think about how Americans like shortcuts, and then think about how we lopped the S off "backwards" to make it shorter.
If you choose to use "backwards" as an adverb in the United States, it’s not wrong, but it may just look a little weird to people. It’s like spelling "colour" with a U; it draws attention to itself and, I suppose, could potentially be distracting to American readers.
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Finally, I have a familect story from Robert.
"Hello. Hi. This is this Robert Gonzales. I was calling from Uhland, Texas; it's like a small suburb of Kyle, which is a suburb of Austin. But we have a familect story. So we grew up in Japan. That's where I was born, and then as we were growing up, my family, we would [drink juice], both my brother and I, but we didn't ever call it juice. Both my parents speak Spanish, and so we called it 'jugo,' but my father's from, he was born in Cleveland, and so they call like everything 'pop' up there, so because that's how he talked, we kind of kinda blended it too. So we started referring to everything we drank as a kid, we would call it 'jugopop,' and so it applied to like to milk, apple juice, pop, or even anything that wasn't water, and so that's kind of carried on to our kids as well. So now our kids would ask, you know, like for some jugopop. It confused everybody because, you know, the [?] would be running to the store, [asking] like a where can we find this jugopop? Is that something that's only sold in Japan, and things like that. But you know, my parents had to kinda explain like 'No … just give him something to drink that's not water and they're good.' And it kinda continued to this day. But anyway, I'd love to talk; I do appreciate the opportunity to share stories like this, and I really like hearing them from other families across the country, and we kinda started adopting some of these words that we've learned into our familial dialect. So anyway, thank you very much. God bless. Bye."
Thanks so much for the call, Robert. It's such an interesting way to blend words across languages. I love that, and I loved that people were like "Is that something from Japan?" I laughed out loud. Thanks again.
If you want to call in with your familect story, the number is in the show notes, and it's also always in my weekly email newsletter, which you can sign up for at QuickAndDirtyTips.com.
Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to my audio engineer Nathan Semes, and my editor, Adam Cecil, who just got an analog-to-digital audio converter so he can make a digital copy of an old Richard Scarry cassette tape. Our ad operations specialist is Morgan Christianson, and our digital operations specialist is Holly Hutchings.
And I’m Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl. That's all. Thanks for listening.
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What follows are references that were not read out in the audio.
References for the gendered language segment.
Braun, F., Sczesny, S., & Stahlberg, D. (2005). Cognitive Effects of Masculine Generics in German: An Overview of Empirical Findings. Communications (Sankt Augustin), 30(1), 1-21.
Carreiras, M., Garnham, A., Oakhill, J., & Cain, K. (1996). The use of stereotypical gender information in constructing a mental model: evidence from English and Spanish. The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. A, Human experimental psychology, 49(3), 639–663.
DeFranza, D., Mishra, H., & Mishra, A. (2020). How language shapes prejudice against women: An examination across 45 world languages. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 119(1), 7–22.
Eilers, S., Tiffin-Richards, S. P., & Schroeder, S. (2018). Individual differences in children’s pronoun processing during reading: Detection of incongruence is associated with higher reading fluency and more regressions. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 173, 250-267.
Stahlberg, D., Braun, F., Irmen, L., & Sczesny, S. (2007). Representation of the sexes in language. In K. Fiedler (Ed.), Social communication. A volume in the series Frontiers of Social Psychology.163-187.
Moehlman, Lara. (2018) Can Hebrew Be Gender Neutral? https://momentmag.com/can-hebrew-be-gender-neutral/. Accessed 8.7.2022.