Friday, October 26, 2007
Gender and Language
When discussing gender dichotomy in world affairs, it is interesting to examine how cultural linguistics produce different ways of thinking about gender. This is called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. In English, third-person singular pronouns categorize gender, although there is no noun-gender and adjective agreement, as in French, Italian, Spanish, or German, who categorize all objects and adjectives as masculine or feminine. This suggests that the Italians, for example, focus more on gender differences than Americans. Language affects the way people think, which filters into social interactions.
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2 comments:
This is a really interesting point, and it made me think about the gender of certain nouns in French. For example, 'kitchen,' 'table,' and 'spoon' are all feminine (because they're associated with domestic work?), whereas 'knife,' 'office,' and 'desk' are all masculine. (However, 'war' is feminine.)
This is really cool. During Spanish tests in high school, we were always graded on whether we got the EL, LA, etc. part right. I'd always think about the object and try to determine the EL or LA by thinking whether they are masculine or feminine. But sometimes this doesn't work - why is DIA, which ends with an A, masculine? Dia means day.
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