Feminisation of names of professions, functions, degrees or titles in the French press

Alina Iftime

Lecturer PhD., Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ovidius University of Constanta, ROMANIA, alinaiftime@yahoo.com

 

Abstract

Feminisation of names of professions is a set of linguistic processes consisting of explicating women’s presence on the public stage.

In this study, we refer to feminisation of terminology or creation of terms denoting feminine professions, titles, degrees and functions, without taking into account texts’ feminisation.

In French, female human beings are designated by feminine grammar pronouns, leading to male-female opposition representation with respect to the division of the sexes.

For the feminisation defenders, this representation has considerable social consequences. In French, the masculine gender can be used as generic gender (un professeur may nominate a man or a woman) and it is the gender of a group composed of individuals of both sexes. However, this use was perceived by feminisation upholders as concealing the role of women in public life, and it may even cause psychological strength to stand in certain positions. Therefore, the discussion on the gender of the words denoting status or professional activities of human beings is not only a formal grammar issue, but a matter of sociolinguistics, closely linked to the image that society makes on the relationship between genders and it may even influence these relationships.

In the French current use, it appears that certain feminine professions nouns are used when the job is occupied by a woman, while at some point in the past, when it was not accepted as a woman to occupy that post, the same feminine form was denoting the wife of the man occupying the post.

But French Academy considers that feminisation can introduce an imbalance in the language structures and cause confusion in formulating simple sentences. Although nouns such as professeure, recteure, sapeuse-pompière, auteure, ingénieure, procureure are considered by the French Academy elected members as „barbarisms“, a number of nouns was introduced in the 8th issue of the Dictionary of the Academy: artisane, aviatrice, avocate, bûcheronne, compositrice, éditrice, exploratrice, factrice, pharmacienne, postière.

In this article, based on a corpus of nouns in French written press in the period of September 2016, we will present the evolution of the feminisation of names of professions, highlighting areas in which nouns become easier used in their feminine form. We will examine the position of the press, knowing that the media has a great influence on language changes, while reflecting the mentality of the people.

Keywords: French, sociolinguistics, feminisation, names of profession, French press.

   

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