Woman and Pay
Unmarked and Marked Terms
Unmarked linguistic forms are neutral in so far as they represent the ‘norm’ and carry no additional information.
Marked means noticeably unusual; refer to anything which deviates from the norm and this deviation is signaled information.
nurse (female) vs. male nurse
Semantic Derogation – the way in which words that refer to women have acquired belittling or sexual connotations; ‘deroge’ means ‘to cause to seem inferior’
bachelor vs. spinster/old maid
Hedges – linguistic devices such as ‘sort of’ and ‘I think’ which dilutes an assertion. Compare “he’s dishonest” and “he’s sort of dishonest”; “she lost it” and “I think she lost it”
Keywords:
- Semantic derogation
- Gender representation
- Sexist language
- Hedges
Gender inferences: Grammatical features and their impact on the representation of gender in bilinguals
http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1366728912000739
SAYAKA SATO, PASCAL M. GYGAX and UTE GABRIEL (2013). Gender inferences: Grammatical features and their impact on the representation of gender in bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 16, pp 792-807 doi:10.1017/S1366728912000739
