| dc.description.abstract | In 1980, the first German proposals for gender-fairness in language were published in
Germany. They suggested many gender-fair alternatives to items such as the generic
masculine, which were believed to convey androcentric or sexist meanings. Since
then critics of androcentrism in the German language, together with subsequent
antidiscrimination legislation, have instigated several linguistic changes that aim at an
equal treatment and representation of the two genders. This ongoing reform of
German is, however, primarily noticeable in the official, and especially the written,
form of German; there are effective laws that ensure the use of non-discriminatory
items in this domain. In private language, on the other hand - both spoken and written
- there appears to be less readiness to use gender-fair terms. However, until now
there has been little empirical research that investigates the extent to which people
are willing to speak and write gender-fair language in their everyday private lives.
Thus, there is little knowledge of whether speakers of German are aware of any
sexism in their language, whether they agree with the criticisms that have been made
of the androcentric aspects of their language, or whether they approve of the many
gender-fair innovations. The present case study, using a triangulation approach,
investigates these questions. The research is conducted in a local speech community
in North-Rhine Westphalia. It focuses on the inhabitants of this community as a
source of information. More generally, the study emphasises the strong but often
neglected relationship between two fields of study within sociolinguistics that are often
kept separate: 'Language and Gender'and 'Language Planning'. | en_US |
