BENEVOLENT SEXIST TENDENCIES IN GENDER ASSESSMENT IN THE ENGLISH TERM OF ENDEARMENT “BABY” AND ITS VARIATIONS

Authors

  • Sofia Nikolaishvili

Keywords:

language and gender, terms of address, terms of endearment, sexism

Abstract

The present article aims to analyze benevolent sexist tendencies in the process of gender assessment in the English term of endearment “baby” and its variations. Representing the social, cultural and psychological aspects of a particular linguistic community, studying address terms closely, terms of endearment among them, can reveal much about language and people. The data for the study is retrieved from the online surveys specifically made for the research about the relationship between this aspect of language and gender. The results align with the theories of benevolent and indirect sexism, as well as with the results of other studies about gender and language conducted by scholars interested in this topic.

Full Text (PDF)

Author Biography

Sofia Nikolaishvili

Sofia Nikolaishvili is a final term student at MA in English Studies, at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University currently researching gender assessment tendencies in English address terms. Their research interests include sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic gender related issues. They have an extensive experience of teaching English to multi-level classrooms.

References

Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. Endearment, respect, and disdain through linguistic gender. ReVEL, edição especial, v. 17, n. 16, 2019. [http://www.revel.inf.br]

Biber, D., et al. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Edinburgh: Pearson Education Ltd.

Boasso, A., Covert, S., & Ruscher, J. B. (2012). Benevolent sexist beliefs predict perceptions of speakers and recipients of a term of endearment. The Journal of Social Psychology, 152(5), 533-546. doi:10.1080/00224545.2011.650236

Brown, R. and Gilman, A. 1960. The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity. In Sebeok, T. A. (ed.), Style in Language, 253-276. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Carstens, W. A. (1989). Grammatical gender in AFRIKAANS simplification in action. Retrieved April 9, 2021, from https://www.ds.uzh.ch/dam

Desai, Sonalde, Amaresh Dubey, and Reeve Vanneman, “India Human Development SurveyII (IHDSII),” University of Maryland and National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi 2015. distributed by: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research,

Ann Arbor, MI. Fasold, R. (1990). Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Blackwell.

Gal, S. (1991). BETWEEN SPEECH AND SILENCE: The problematics of research on language and gender. Retrieved April 9, 2021, from https://benjamins.com/catalog/iprapip. doi: https://doi.org/10.1075/iprapip

Greville G. Corbett, G. Greville. (2013). Number of Genders. In: Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath,

Martin (eds.) The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at http://wals.info/chapter/30, Accessed on 2021-05-10.)

Glick, P., & Fiske, S. T. (1996). a., The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory: Differentiating hostile and benevolent sexism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 491–512.

Glick, P., & Fiske, S. T. (2001). b., An ambivalent alliance: Hostile and benevolent sexism as complementary justifications for gender inequality. American Psychologist, 56(2), 109–118. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.56.2.109

Gygax, P. M., Elmiger, D., Zufferey, S., Garnham, A., Sczesny, S., Von Stockhausen, L., Oakhill, J. (2019). A language index of grammatical gender dimensions to study the impact of grammatical gender on the way we perceive women and men. Frontiers in Psychology, 10.doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01604

Kiesling, S. (2007). Men, masculinities, and language. Language and Linguistics Compass, 1(6), 653–673. doi:10.1111/j.1749-818X.2007.00035.x [Crossref], [Google Scholar]

LAKOFF, R. (1975). Language and woman’s place. Harper and Row Publishers

Published

2021-06-24

How to Cite

Nikolaishvili, S. (2021). BENEVOLENT SEXIST TENDENCIES IN GENDER ASSESSMENT IN THE ENGLISH TERM OF ENDEARMENT “BABY” AND ITS VARIATIONS. Online Journal of Humanities ETAGTSU, (6), pages 14. Retrieved from https://etagtsu.tsu.ge/index.php/journal/article/view/40

Issue

Section

Articles

Categories