Gender neutrality in English
linguistic feature in the English language
Gender-neutral language is language that avoids assumptions about the social gender or biological sex of people referred to in speech or writing. In contrast to most other Indo-European languages, English does not retain grammatical gender and most of its nouns, adjectives and pronouns are therefore not gender-specific. In most other Indo-European languages, nouns are grammatically masculine (as in Spanish el humano) or grammatically feminine (as in French la personne), or grammatically neuter (as in German das Mädchen), regardless of the actual gender of the referent.
In addressing natural gender, English speakers use linguistic strategies that may reflect the speaker's attitude to the issue or the perceived social acceptability of such strategies.
Debate
Supporters of gender-neutral language argue that making language less biased is not only laudable but also achievable. Some people find the use of non-neutral language to be offensive.
[There is] a growing awareness that language does not merely reflect the way we think: it also shapes our thinking. If words and expressions that imply that women are inferior to men are constantly used, that assumption of inferiority tends to become part of our mindset... Language is a powerful tool: poets and propagandists know this – as, indeed, do victims of discrimination.
The standards advocated by supporters of the gender-neutral modification in English have been applied differently and to differing degrees among English speakers worldwide.
“Gender neutrality in English” enters the record as linguistic feature in the English language. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Gender, neutrality and English can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gender neutrality in English” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.