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Man, en, mon, hen – Attityder till generiska pronomen i svenska språket

Kristoffersson, Jenny LU (2022) ALSK13 20212
Division of Linguistics and Cognitive Semiotics
General Linguistics
Abstract
It has been theorised and researched whether masculine generics are perceived as sexist and should be replaced by so-called gender-fair language. Masculine generics are grammatically masculine forms that are used to refer to people generically. This study investigated Swedish-speaking individuals’ attitudes towards the primary generic pronoun man (‘man’), its partial replacement and less common generic pronoun en (‘one’), the neologism mon (as generic ‘you’), as well as the gender-neutral pronoun hen (‘she/he’). Generally, people declared that they did not consider man to be problematic from a feminist perspective, however, the majority were aware of the debate about the word and had reflected upon their usage of it. Neutrality was the... (More)
It has been theorised and researched whether masculine generics are perceived as sexist and should be replaced by so-called gender-fair language. Masculine generics are grammatically masculine forms that are used to refer to people generically. This study investigated Swedish-speaking individuals’ attitudes towards the primary generic pronoun man (‘man’), its partial replacement and less common generic pronoun en (‘one’), the neologism mon (as generic ‘you’), as well as the gender-neutral pronoun hen (‘she/he’). Generally, people declared that they did not consider man to be problematic from a feminist perspective, however, the majority were aware of the debate about the word and had reflected upon their usage of it. Neutrality was the predominant attitude towards en, and more than 70 percent of the participants stated that they never deliberately use en instead of man. Most people had a negative attitude towards the suggested form mon. Lastly, more than half of the participants had a positive attitude towards hen, and almost two-thirds reported that they use hen in speech or in writing. The results indicate that most Swedish-speaking people deem that there is not a great need for more gender-neutral generic forms in the Swedish language. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Kristoffersson, Jenny LU
supervisor
organization
course
ALSK13 20212
year
type
M2 - Bachelor Degree
subject
language
Swedish
id
9092898
date added to LUP
2022-08-08 11:07:40
date last changed
2022-08-08 11:07:40
@misc{9092898,
  abstract     = {{It has been theorised and researched whether masculine generics are perceived as sexist and should be replaced by so-called gender-fair language. Masculine generics are grammatically masculine forms that are used to refer to people generically. This study investigated Swedish-speaking individuals’ attitudes towards the primary generic pronoun man (‘man’), its partial replacement and less common generic pronoun en (‘one’), the neologism mon (as generic ‘you’), as well as the gender-neutral pronoun hen (‘she/he’). Generally, people declared that they did not consider man to be problematic from a feminist perspective, however, the majority were aware of the debate about the word and had reflected upon their usage of it. Neutrality was the predominant attitude towards en, and more than 70 percent of the participants stated that they never deliberately use en instead of man. Most people had a negative attitude towards the suggested form mon. Lastly, more than half of the participants had a positive attitude towards hen, and almost two-thirds reported that they use hen in speech or in writing. The results indicate that most Swedish-speaking people deem that there is not a great need for more gender-neutral generic forms in the Swedish language.}},
  author       = {{Kristoffersson, Jenny}},
  language     = {{swe}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Man, en, mon, hen – Attityder till generiska pronomen i svenska språket}},
  year         = {{2022}},
}