Martina Giovine
Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele
This research addresses the topic of gender-fair language from a moral point of view, supported by some experimental studies. Language is not a neutral tool: with words we express concepts, feelings, intentions; and, on the other hand, we can hurt, convey stereotypes, reinforce social hierarchies. These hierarchies manifest themselves in turn in linguistic androcentrism and – in a circular relationship – the linguistic androcentrism feeds social inequalities. In languages whose terms are marked by grammatical gender (German, Spanish, Italian, etc.), among the main linguistic devices under discussion, we find the so-called “overextended masculine”, namely the misuse of the masculine grammatical gender to represent all humanity (Sczesny, Formanowicz, Moser, 2016). Furthermore, gender binarism – which is implicit in the grammatical structure – excludes non-binary people (Dembroff, 2018). In this talk, I will argue that it is ethically correct to question the androcentric character of language and to apply linguistic strategies from an inclusive perspective. This thesis is motivated by the fact that linguistic androcentrism has an impact on the reinforcement of gender hierarchies with clear social consequences. After placing the topic in a moral context, I will shift the focus to the identification of the main androcentric linguistic devices of the Italian language. Finally, I will present some experimental studies discussed by Sczesny, Formanowicz and Moser, that show that language can have consequences on cognitive representation. In conclusion, the thesis I argue is that we cannot ignore gender inequalities from a linguistic point of view and that we need to pay attention to words in order to adopt a gender-fair language.
Chair: Felix Danowski
Time: September 7th, 10:00-10:30
Location: SR 1.005
SOPhiA 2026 