Gender Bias in Language Comprehension
Exploring the Role of Gender Bias in Adjectives of the Danish Language
Keywords:
Gender bias, Heuristics, top-down processes, Danish adjectivesAbstract
Humans depend on top-down processes in their understanding of language. Previous studies have shown how gender biases are apparent in human communication and have suggested that these come from previous experiences that lay the grounds for a heuristical approach to language comprehension. In this paper, we suggest that there is a gender bias in some of the most common Danish adjectives. Furthermore, we indicate that this gender bias can be used to alter the way in which Danish speakers understand seemingly gender-neutral, syntactical subjects. This is done through statistical analyses made on the basis of results from online questionnaires. We discuss our results with a starting point in literature about social role theory and gender bias and use this as grounds for proposing that Danish speakers are heuristically limited by gender stereotypes when assessing the gender of a gender-neutral, grammatical subject in written Danish.
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Arnon, I., & Snider, N. (2010). More than words: Frequency effects for multi-word phrases. Journal of Memory and Language, 62(1), 67–82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2009.09.005
Basby, A. (n.d.). Talende Adjektivsliste. Retrieved 28 May 2020, from http://basby.dk/adjektivliste/adj.html
Bates, D., Mächler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2015). Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67(1). https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v067.i01
Blumentritt, T. L., & Heredia, R. R. (2005). Stereotype Processing and Nonliteral Language. In Figurative language comprehension: Social and cultural influences. (pp. 261–281). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
Cuddy, A. J. C., Fiske, S. T., & Glick, P. (2004). When Professionals Become Mothers, Warmth Doesn’t Cut the Ice. Journal of Social Issues, 60(4), 701–718. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0022-4537.2004.00381.x
Eagly, A. H. (1987). Reporting sex differences. American Psychologist, 42(7), 756–757. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.42.7.755
Eagly, A. H., Wood, W., & Diekman, A. B. (2000). Social role theory of sex differences and similarities: A current appraisal. In The developmental social psychology of gender. (pp. 123–174). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
Ferreira, F., & Chantavarin, S. (2018). Integration and Prediction in Language Processing: A Synthesis of Old and New. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(6), 443–448. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721418794491
Fitch, W. T., Huber, L., & Bugnyar, T. (2010). Social Cognition and the Evolution of Language: Constructing Cognitive Phylogenies. Neuron, 65(6), 795–814. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2010.03.011
Frank, S. L. (2013). Uncertainty reduction as a measure of cognitive load in sentence comprehension. Topics in Cognitive Science, 5(3), 475–494. https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12025
Kleinschmidt, D. F., & Jaeger, T. F. (2015). Robust speech perception: Recognize the familiar, generalize to the similar, and adapt to the novel. Psychological Review, 122(2), 148–203. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038695
Koenig, A. M., & Eagly, A. H. (2014). Evidence for the social role theory of stereotype content: Observations of groups’ roles shape stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107(3), 371–392. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037215
Kuperberg, G. R., & Jaeger, T. F. (2016). What do we mean by prediction in language comprehension? Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 31(1), 32–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2015.1102299
Lassonde, K. A., & O’Brien, E. J. (2013). Occupational stereotypes: Activation of male bias in a gender-neutral world: Occupational stereotypes. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 43(2), 387–396. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2013.01008.x
Lippmann, W. (1965). Public opinion,. Free Press; /z-wcorg/.
Madera, J. M., Hebl, M. R., & Martin, R. C. (2009). Gender and letters of recommendation for academia: Agentic and communal differences. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(6), 1591–1599. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016539
Moulton, J., Robinson, G. M., & Elias, C. (1978). Sex bias in language use: ‘Neutral’ pronouns that aren’t. American Psychologist, 33(11), 1032–1036. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.33.11.1032
Qian, T., Jaeger, T. F., & Aslin, R. N. (2012). Learning to Represent a Multi-Context Environment: More than Detecting Changes. Frontiers in Psychology, 3. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00228
R Core Team (2019). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. http://www.R-project.org/.
Rosch, E. H. (1973). Natural categories. Cognitive Psychology, 4(3), 328–350. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(73)90017-0
Van Petten, C., & Luka, B. J. (2012). Prediction during language comprehension: Benefits, costs, and ERP components. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 83(2), 176–190. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2011.09.015
Whorf, B. L. (1956). Language, thought, and reality: Selected writings. Cambridge, Mass.
Wood, W., & Eagly, A. H. (2002). A cross-cultural analysis of the behavior of women and men: Implications for the origins of sex differences. Psychological Bulletin, 128(5), 699–727. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.128.5.699
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Published
2020-07-03
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Hansen, L. H., & Mengel-Niemann, K. S. (2020). Gender Bias in Language Comprehension: Exploring the Role of Gender Bias in Adjectives of the Danish Language. Journal of Language Works - Sprogvidenskabeligt Studentertidsskrift, 5(1), 61–77. Retrieved from https://tidsskrift.dk/lwo/article/view/121219
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