scholarly journals The evolution of gender-inclusive language. Evidence from the German Bundestag, 1949-2021

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Stecker ◽  
Jochen Müller ◽  
Andreas Blätte ◽  
Christoph Leonhardt

Gender-inclusive language is an important issue in the struggle for political equality between women and men. Parliaments are an important site in this struggle as they both reflect and shape gender-relations in society. Based on a novel high-quality corpus of all its debates we study the evolution of gender-fair language in the German parliament, Bundestag, between 1949 and 2021. As a "gender language" with a grammatical gender, German offers ideal conditions to inspect semantically symmetric male and female forms of personal nouns. Our analysis of more than 2.5 million occurrences of 1,600 lemmas of personal nouns reveals that female forms had been virtually non-existent in debates before experiencing a dramatic increase since the 1980s. This evolution in language use has been induced by the gender, partisan affiliation and generational affiliation of MPs.

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nurmaliana Sari ◽  
Sumarsih Sumarsih ◽  
Busmin Gurning

This study discusses about language use occurred by male and female host in Hitam Putih talk show. The method of this research is descriptive qualitative. The subjects of this study are male and female host in Hitam Putih talk show. The data are the utterances produced by male and female host in Hitam Putih talk show. This research focuses on the show broadcasted on October 2016 by taking 4 videos randomly. The objective of this study is to describe kinds of the language use uttered by male and female host in Hitam Putih talk show. The findings showed that the kinds of language use consist of 6 parts. The dominant language use uttered by male host is expletive, because male’s utterances are frequently stated in a negative connotation. On the other hand, female host utterances are found in specialized vocabulary as the most dominant because female host has more interest in talking family affairs, such as the education of children, clothes, cooking, and fashion, etc. Women also tended to talk about one thing related to the home and domestic activities. However, the representation of language use uttered by male and female are deficit, dominance and different. Keywords: Language Use, Gender, Talk Show


2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (S1) ◽  
pp. 11-12
Author(s):  
Markus Wübbeler ◽  
Sebastian Geis

IntroductionOpposition parties in Germany are allowed to send formal requests to the government to control actions and pass important political debates to the parliament. These formal requests include a comprehensive analysis report issued by the scientific service of the German parliament. A systematic overview of these reports would support a deeper understanding about healthcare topics and assessments discussed by parties in the highest German decision body, particularly in the field of nursing.MethodsWe conducted a review using the German parliament “Bundestag” database for all formal requests since 1949. To systemize the formal requests we performed a quantitative category analysis using descriptive statistics.ResultsWe identified 26,197 formal requests with 146 reports related to nursing issued between 1978 and 2019. The 146 reports related to nursing accounted for 0.54 percent of all requests. Almost 30 percent of these requests were related to recruitment and qualification. The second major topic, with 15 percent, was financing of the nursing sector. Of all 146 formal requests in the history of the Bundestag, 55 percent (n = 81) were issued in the last 10 years.ConclusionsNursing is an emerging topic in the German parliament, highlighting the demographic shift in Germany and the growing pressure in the nursing care sector. Health Technology Assessment bodies should be informed and work together with the scientific services of parliamentary bodies. This would support a more transparent and evidence based healthcare system, aside from lobbyism.


2016 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. I. A. Pereira ◽  
R. B. Silva ◽  
W. S. Tavares ◽  
J. B. Malaquias ◽  
J. C. Zanuncio

Abstract Sexual choice by male stink bugs is important because females that experience food shortages lay fewer eggs with lower viability compared with well-fed females. In this study, we investigated whether Podisus nigrispinus (Dallas) (Heteroptera: Pentatomidae) males fed with a low-quality diet during its nymphal stage show selectivity for sexual partners resulting in high-quality progeny. Lightweight males and females were obtained from nymphs fed weekly with Tenebrio molitor L. (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) pupae. By contrast, heavyweight males and females were fed three times a week and received an extra nutritional source: cotton leaves, Gossypium hirsutum L. (Malvaceae). Lightweight males preferred to mate with heavy females (77.78 ± 14.69%), whereas heavyweight males did not discriminated between light or heavyweight females. Females mated with lightweight males showed similar levels of reproduction to those mated with heavyweight males. The results provide an indication of the importance of male and female body weight for sexual selection in Asopinae stink bugs.


2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (1 (8)) ◽  
pp. 110-115
Author(s):  
Iraj Safaei Keshtegar

Discourse analysis theory is an extensive scientific field where a number of scientific traditions cooperate, including linguistics, cognitive psychology, sociology and artificial intelligence. The present article attempts to reveal the role of the highest levels of discourse in explaining the role of the application of the language. To achieve the goal 70 male and female students of general English have been chosen randomly. The findings of the research correspond to the famous idea of D.H. Hymes about the application of the language according to which grammar rules are senseless without the knowledge of the rules of the language use. The research presents methodological advice to the lecturers of higher educational institutions which can help develop the communication skills of their lecturers.


1991 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 210-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Wright ◽  
R.C. King

An analysis of the teacher language used in physical education lessons reveals the influence of many discourses that are current in our culture, including those related to gender. The subtle meanings carried in the linguistic choices made by teachers provide one framework through which girls and boys come to form particular relationships with their bodies. These relationships are culturally constructed and influence the desire to be active and the choice of activities. The process of gender production can be made visible by a comparative analysis of the lexico-grammatical structure of texts from two gymnastic lessons using the systemic functional model of linguistics developed by Michael Halliday (1978, 1985). The most distinctive features that have emerged from the analysis have been the different linguistic choices made by male and female teachers in the grammatical realization of interpersonal meanings. These differences contribute to the construction of a social order for the participants in physical education lessons that mirrors the gender relations in the culture of the larger society. Revealing the way the language works provides for the possibility of different linguistic choices—choices that may constitute a different social reality.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 633-657
Author(s):  
Kevin Vallier

Abstract Democratic theorists have proposed a number of competing justifications for democratic order, but no theory has achieved a consensus. While expecting consensus may be unrealistic, I nonetheless contend that we can make progress in justifying democratic order by applying competing democratic theories to different stages of the democratic process. In particular, I argue that the selection of political officials should be governed in accord with aggregative democracy. This process should prize widespread participation, political equality, and proper preference aggregation. I then argue that the selection of public policies by political officials should be governed in accord with deliberative democracy. This process should prize high quality deliberation and political equality. A process democracy is a democracy that joins an aggregative process for selecting officials with a deliberative process for selecting policies. Democracy is justified and legitimate when it is structured in this way.


2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (02) ◽  
pp. 448-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy L. Atchison

ABSTRACTOpen-access (OA) advocates have long promoted OA as an egalitarian alternative to traditional subscription-based academic publishing. The argument is simple: OA gives everyone access to high-quality research at no cost. In turn, this should benefit individual researchers by increasing the number of people reading and citing academic articles. As the OA movement gains traction in the academy, scholars are investing considerable research energy to determine whether there is an OA citation advantage—that is, does OA increase an article’s citation counts? Research indicates that it does. Scholars also explored patterns of gender bias in academic publishing and found that women are cited at lower rates in many disciplines. Indeed, in many disciplines, men enjoy a significant and positive gender citation effect (GCE) compared to their female colleagues. This article combines these research areas to determine whether the OA citation advantage varies by gender. Using Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney (WMW) tests, the nonparametric analog to the independent samples T-test, I conclude that OA benefits male and female political scientists at similar rates. Thus, OA negates the gender citation advantage that typically accrues to male political scientists.


2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 525-552
Author(s):  
Raquel Casesnoves ◽  
Josep-Àngel Mas ◽  
Anna Tudela

Aims and objectives: The main aim of this study is to find out which social and ideological factors determine the maintenance of Catalan language in public contexts, and particularly the relative weight each factor contributes to the choice. The question is which of the socio-demographic and ideological factors determines to a greater extent the use of Catalan. Methodology: Participants completed a survey, which consisted of a sociolinguistic questionnaire and an attitudinal test based on the matched-guise technique. Sociolinguistic inferences concerning the relationship between different factors and language use were made using statistical methods. Data: Six hundred university students from the cities of Valencia, Palma and Barcelona answered the same survey. University students are a very interesting research group, since they are going to become part of the most influential social groups. Findings: Results from the analysis support the importance of social networks in understanding language maintenance, apart from making some differences between the territories clearer: this relative importance of social networks is very high in Valencia and Palma, but not in Barcelona. Originality: This study shows the first comparison between the influence of different kinds of factors in the use of the Catalan language, as well as the comparison between the behaviour of the three major Catalan-speaking cities. Furthermore, the focus on the factors related to university students’ language use is not a much-visited field. Significance and implications: The use of Catalan seems to be naturalized in Barcelona, whereas in Palma and Valencia the use of this language is more ideologized – and minor. The coincidence in the same territory, Catalonia, of the major language use in all situations and the more incisive and inclusive language policy should point out the direction that campaigns to promote Catalan in the other two regions should take.


The Auk ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 118 (3) ◽  
pp. 746-750 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel R. Ardia ◽  
Keith L. Bildstein

AbstractWe investigated sex-related differences in habitat use in wintering American Kestrels (Falco sparverius) at two scales: within a 10 m radius and within a 100 m radius of perch sites. Female kestrels used areas containing a higher percentage of short vegetation (<0.25 m high) suitable for foraging than did males at both scales (100 m radius females 80%, males 69%; 10 m radius females 80%, males 73%). At both scales, females had more pasture (a high-quality foraging substrate) available than did males; areas within a 100 m radius of male perch sites contained more woodlot than did female perch sites. Logistic regression models indicated greater overlap between male and female habitat use on a 10 m radius scale than on a 100 m radius scale, suggesting that males may preferentially select smaller areas devoid of woody vegetation relative to what is available within 100 m radius of perch sites. Our results suggest that males may be constrained to winter in areas with lower overall foraging opportunities and possibly higher predation risk than areas used by females. Our work supports the hypothesis that males and female kestrels prefer open areas as wintering habitat.


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