Masculine generic pronouns as a gender cue in generic statements. Issue 10 (26th November 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Redl, Theresa; Szuba, Agnieszka; de Swart, Peter; Frank, Stefan L.; de Hoop, Helen
• Is Part Of: Discourse processes. Volume 59:Issue 10(2022)
• Page Start: 828
• Page End: 845
• Publication Date: 2022-11-26
• Subjects: Discourse analysis -- Periodicals; 401.41
• DOI: 10.1080/0163853X.2022.2148071
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0163-853X

Abstract

ABSTRACT: An eye-tracking experiment was conducted with speakers of Dutch ( N = 84, 36 male), a language that falls between grammatical and natural-gender languages. We tested whether a masculine generic pronoun causes a male bias when used in generic statements—that is, in the absence of a specific referent. We tested two types of generic statements by varying conceptual number, hypothesizing that the pronoun zijn "his" was more likely to cause a male bias with a conceptually singular than a conceptually plural antecedent (e.g., Someone (conceptually singular)/ Everyone (conceptually plural) with perfect pitch can tune his instrument quickly ). We found male participants to exhibit a male bias but with the conceptually singular antecedent only. Female participants showed no signs of a male bias. The results show that the generically intended masculine pronoun zijn "his" leads to a male bias in conceptually singular generic contexts but that this further depends on participant gender.