Teso, E (2010) A comparative study of gender-based linguistic reform across four european countries. Doctoral thesis, Liverpool John Moores University.

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Abstract

The overall aim of this investigation is to identify the strategies adopted for the implementation of gender-based linguistic reform in four European countries (France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom). In addressing this aim, firstly the study explores the recommendations to eliminate discrimination of women and men from language at supranational level in order to determine whether international recommendations have influenced legislation in the four countries. Secondly, the recommendations on non-sexist language in each national context have been reviewed taking into account the structural features of each language. The study shows the diverse linguistic resources that each of the four language systems has in order to achieve non-discriminatory language and identifies the key recommendations as well as the main promoters of gender-based linguistic reform in each country. The study has found that in all four countries a significant number of measures designed to combat linguistic sexism have been introduced. The investigation also' aims at providing evidence of the adoption of guidelines for the avoidance of sexist language as well as the stages of implementation in each country. To this end, a linguistic analysis of job offers in the four languages has been carried out. This longitudinal study has helped to identify patterns of language usage across the four socia-linguistic settings as well as the preferred strategy in each language. The main finding is that, although there is no consistent strategy regarding the feminisation of occupational nomenclature in the four languages, the common intention has been to make the language of communication gender-inclusive. The study offers a contribution to the existing work in the area of cross-cultural research. Furthermore, the review of similarities and differences between the recommendations for non-sexist language and their implementation in four linguistic settings aims to provide a framework for further research and practical application which can be drawn from the linguistic analysis of naturally occurring data.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HF Commerce > HF5001 Business P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
Divisions:	Liverpool Business School
Date Deposited:	15 Mar 2017 11:12
Last Modified:	03 Sep 2021 23:30
DOI or ID number:	10.24377/LJMU.t.00005952
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/5952

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