TITLE:
Attitudes of University Students to Some Verbal Anti-Sexist Forms
AUTHORS:
Mercedes Bengoechea, José Simón
KEYWORDS:
Non-Sexist Linguistic Policies; Attitudes to Non-Sexist Language Reform; Gender and Spanish
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Modern Linguistics,
Vol.4 No.1,
February
14,
2014
ABSTRACT: After more than two decades of non-sexist linguistic
policies in Spain, a survey was carried out to evaluate the positive or negative attitude of almost 500 students
from two Madrid universities to the most controversial verbal forms advocated
in Spanish non-sexist linguistic policies: 1) the use of @ (as in alumn@s [students]); 2) the use of dual gender (as in
alumnos y alumnas [students- masc and students-fem]); 3) the use of feminine
terms for some women’s professional titles and occupations (i.e. ingeniera
[engineer-fem], bedela [caretaker-fem], arquitecta [architect-fem], médica
[physician-fem], aparejadora [quantity surveyor-fem], gerenta [manager-fem],
perita [ex- pert-fem], cancillera* [chancellor-fem]); 4) the use of non-sexed
collective nouns (as in profeso- rado [teaching staff]). Our aims were to know
to what degree these resources were accepted by highly-educated young people,
whether differences exist between the attitudes of men and women with respect
to these forms, and which of these uses was the best accepted and which the least.
Various examples of these non-sexist uses were presented to university
students, who were asked to make a pronouncement on the feeling which these
gave them or whether they used them. Our study concluded that the @ symbol and
collective nouns are widely accepted among the student community. The dual
gender seems to be also accepted, although greater vacillation was seen and
sometimes the levels of rejection or indifference are higher. Nevertheless, of
the four uses studied, the one which appears to provoke the greatest
hesitation, vacillation or even opposition is the use of the feminine for some
names of professions. In general, the number of female students in favour of
the four features studied exceeds the number of male students.