言語からみたジェンダーの問題

Abstract

Every human language may be classified into two groups: one has a strictly categorized grammatical gender, and the other has no such grammatical notion at all. Grammatical gender is characteristic to the Indo-European languages, of which contemporary German and Russian, for example, preserve it through all grammatical systems, whereas English has lost it completely. In languages such as English, linguistic feminism pursued the equality of sexes in social life through eliminating linguistic distinction of gender. For example, 《chairman》 was replaced by the neutral expression 《chairperson》. In contrast, German has a complete pair of grammatical gender counterparts. So it is impossible to neutralize the distinction of gender and the feminist strategy pursued equal representation of both sexes. In case a German word lacks feminine counterpart, a new word had to be created according to grammatical gender distinction. For example, 《Presidentin - female President》 was created as a counterpart to 《President - male President》. Because the Japanese feminist movement received its idea almost exclusively from that of the USA, its linguistic aspects also took English model of eliminating gender distinction. This model has fit the Japanese traditional mental climate in the sense that people prefer to conceal the truth under ambiguity, rather than expressing the state of things distinctly. Such tendency cannot be expected to contribute reforming the Japanese traditional attitudes of sexism. We should learn more from German and Russian experiences than that of English.