‘The interrelation between social gender and grammatical gender: A novel socio-theoretical approach’
Final Report Abstract
The main objective of this research project was to investigate the interrelation between social gender and grammatical gender across languages. The main research question was: How does social gender (i.e. a person’s social roles, statuses and identities) affect the use of grammatical gender? To answer it, I have proposed a novel methodological approach that interrelates two different disciplines: sociology (the framework ‘sociology of gender’) and theoretical linguistics (the framework ‘Distributed Morphology’) – a methodology that, to the best of my knowledge, had not been proposed before. The framework ‘sociology of gender’ studies social structures in society and distinguishes between the concepts of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ (with no one-to-one correspondence between them). The framework ‘Distributed Morphology’ studies morphosyntactic structures of grammatical categories, including grammatical gender. Thus, the main hypothesis tested in this work was: a change in social structure, namely in gender roles, statuses and identities of an individual produces a change in the use of the grammatical category ‘gender’ in both reference to and selfreference of the individual. Employing various research methods such as sociolinguistic interviews, an online survey, the participants’ self-observation and multiple theoretical analyses in Distributed Morphology and the socio-pragmatic framework, both across languages and within a number of single languages, I have shown that the initial hypothesis is correct: a change in social structure has an immediate effect on the use of grammatical gender. Various degrees of this effect and an interrelation of such a change with societal attitudes and emotions are described in detail in eight scientific peer-reviewed articles (2020-2023) resulting from this research project, which are currently at various stages of publication. The results have also been presented at 12 international conferences. This study crosses a number of disciplines: not only sociology of gender and theoretical linguistics, but also language and gender studies, queer linguistics, lavender linguistics, feminist and transgender studies. The results of this project are thus of interest to theoretical linguists, language typologists, linguistic anthropologists, language-area specialists, sociolinguists and gender sociologists, as well as to members of the general public interested in the interrelated issues of gender, sexuality, linguistic diversity and language attitudes – and specifically to those individuals and communities striving to achieve meaningful gender equality in society.
Publications
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2020. “Similarities and differences between social and grammatical genders across languages.” Paper presented at the Ninth Eurasian Conference on Language and Social Sciences (ECLSS2020a), Kemer, Turkey (invited) [online]
Olga Steriopolo
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2021. “Generic feminines as gender-neutral language forms in German.” Paper presented at the symposium Between feminine and masculine: language(s) and society (BetFaM2021), Lisbon, Portugal [online, December 9–10]
Olga Steriopolo & Christin Schütze
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2021. “Grammatical gender and social world.” Paper presented at the 50th Poznań Linguistic Meeting (PLM), Poznań, Poland
Olga Steriopolo
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2021. “Grammatical language forms used by non-binary transgender* individuals in the LGBT*QIA+ community in Berlin, Germany.” Paper presented at the 27th annual Lavender Languages and Linguistics Conference, California, USA [online May 21–23]
Olga Steriopolo & Harley Aussoleil
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2021. “Parameters of variation in the syntax of expressive suffixes: Case studies of Russian, German, Spanish, and Greek.” Paper presented at the 54th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE), the workshop Dissecting Morphological Theory 1: Diminutivization Across Languages and Frameworks, Athens, Greece [online 30 August– 3 September]
Olga Steriopolo, Giorgos Markopoulos & Vassilis Spyropoulos
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2021. “The interrelation between social gender and grammatical gender across languages.” Paper presented at the Fifth International Conference on Language Contact in Times of Globalization (LCTG5), Klagenfurt, Austria [online, September 9–10]
Olga Steriopolo
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A morphosyntactic analysis of nominal expressive suffixes in Russian and Greek. The Linguistic Review, 38(4), 645-686.
Steriopolo, Olga; Markopoulos, Giorgos & Spyropoulos, Vassilios
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Grammatical gender reversals: A morphosyntactic and sociopragmatic analysis. Open Linguistics, 7(1), 136-166.
Steriopolo, Olga
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2022. “A theoretical account for mixed gender agreement in Ukrainian.” Paper presented at the Formal Description of Slavic Languages (FDSL-15), Berlin, Germany [on-site, Oct 5–7].
Olga Steriopolo
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2022. “Division of gender.” Paper presented at the 3rd International Conference on Sociolinguistics (ICS.3), Prague, Czech Republic [on-site, August 24–26]
Olga Steriopolo
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2022. “Gender discrepancies and an evaluative gender shift: A cross-linguistic study within the Distributed Morphology framework.” Paper presented at the Fifteenth Conference on Syntax, Phonology and Language Analysis (SinFonIJA 15), Udine, Italy [online, September 22–24]
Olga Steriopolo
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2022. “Grammatical gender of Ukrainian nouns.” Paper presented at the International Conference on Economics and Social Sciences (ECLSS), Belek, Antalya, Turkey (invited) [on-site, October 21–23]
Olga Steriopolo
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The division of GENDER. Voprosy Jazykoznanija, 1, 59.
Steriopolo, Olga
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2023. “A sociolinguistic investigation into referential means in German using feminine epicene nouns and a comparison with masculine generic nouns”. Paper will be presented at the international workshop on Grammatical gender and ‘natural’ gender: Mappings and mismatches, Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany (invited) [on-site June 1–2]
lga Steriopolo & Christin Schütze
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2023. “An experimental study of the interrelation between gender, language, and sexuality in the German-speaking society”. Paper presented at the Lavender Languages and Linguistics Conference 29 (Lav Lang 29), Boise State, ID, USA [online, March 9–11]
Olga Steriopolo & Christin Schütze
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2023. “Feminine epicene nouns as gender-neutral forms in German: Challenging the binary”. Paper will be presented at Challenging the Binary: Non-Binary, Genderqueer, and Gender-Neutral Language (CtB01), University College London, UK [online, June 13–15]
Olga Steriopolo
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2023. “The application of the integrated sociological paradigm to the DP structure: A study of gender discrepancies”. Paper will be presented at the 52nd Poznań Linguistic Meeting (PLM), Poznań, Poland [on-site, September 13–15]
Olga Steriopolo
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Feminine grammatical forms as gender-fair language in German: A gender typicality study of role and profession nouns. In Between feminine and masculine: language(s) and society, eds. Benjamin Fagard & Ana Margarida Abrantes. Católica (Lisbon) (invited)
Schütze, Christin & Olga Steriopolo
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Gender discrepancies and evaluative gender switch: A cross-linguistic study within Distributed Morphology. In Trends in Linguistics, eds. Stela Manova, Katharina Korecky-Kröll and Laura Grestenberger. De Gruyter (Berlin)
Steriopolo, Olga
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Individuals' pronoun choice: A case study of transgender speakers in Berlin, Germany. The Routledge Handbook of Pronouns, 465-479. Routledge.
Steriopolo, Olga & Aussoleil, Harley
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Parameters of variation in the syntax of expressive suffixes: Case studies of Russian, German, Spanish and Greek. Expressivity in European Languages, 361-392. Cambridge University Press.
Steriopolo, Olga; Markopoulos, Giorgos & Spyropoulos, Vassilios
