Revisiting gender-fair language and stereotypes: A comparison of word pairs, capital I forms and the asterisk

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Silke Schunack - (Author)
  • Anja Binanzer - , Leibniz University Hannover (LUH) (Author)

Abstract

In this paper we replicated two influential studies on gender-fair language that investigated how gender-fair language influences stereotype perception and recall of exemplars. We also updated the original studies to assess new forms of gender-fair language. A first set of studies replicated Gabriel et al. (2008) by eliciting gender proportion ratings for occupational nouns from adult German native speakers for word pairs, capital I forms and the asterisk. Results were mixed with effects mainly for female-biased nouns. Only the non-binary asterisk form (Lehrer*innen) showed an increase of women for male-biased nouns. A third study replicated Stahlberg and Sczesny’s (2001) naming study. Here, the number of women answers was higher than in the original study and increased when using gender-fair language with a larger increase for capital I forms (LehrerInnen) than for word pairs (Lehrer und Lehrerinnen). Overall, the effects of word pair forms were weaker than those of other forms of gender-fair language.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)309-337
Number of pages29
JournalZeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft
Volume41
Issue number2
Early online date6 Sept 2022
Publication statusPublished - 30 Nov 2022
Peer-reviewedYes
Externally publishedYes

External IDs

Scopus 85137728105
ORCID /0000-0002-6397-510X/work/165062488

Keywords

Keywords

  • German, feminine plural, gender-fair language, generic masculine, stereotypes

Library keywords