The Debate on Gender-Fair Language in the Dominican Republic: Assessing the Phenomenon’s Form, Usage, and Linguistic Attitudes Open Access

Abstract

The work presented in this thesis examines linguistic attitudes and grammaticality judgments in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic for the phenomenon of gender-fair language (GFL) or, ‘lenguaje inclusivo.’ To assess Dominicans’ attitudes, values, and prejudices, participants (N = 40) took a Qualtrics survey, providing them with written cues on individuals employing gender-fair language testing their level of acceptance, rejection, exposure, and usage, as well as their grammatical judgements. Since people’s linguistic attitudes and prejudices are potentially good indicators of ideological division on forms and varieties, this study allows linguists to have a better sense of how the iterations of GFL relate to its usage and acceptance. The target population ranges from 18 to 65 years old. The results show four main points: firstly, that the x-morpheme, as the least innovative choice between itself and the e-morpheme, is slightly less accepted in participants. Secondly, on average, the singular form of GFL has slightly more acceptance than the plural form. Thirdly, rejection of Dominican Spanish is meaningfully lower than GFL. Lastly, there was a smaller neutrality rate for the GFL pertaining to other topics, giving a higher rejection. 

Table of Contents

Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………… 1

Gender-Fair Language Form and Usage ……………………………………………. 5

Arbitrariness and Grammatical Gender in Spanish …………………………...... 5

Social Meaning in From ………………………………………………………........... 7

 Gender-Fair Language in Other Contexts ………………………………......…… 8

Latin America and Spain ………………………………...…………................….. 8

GFL in Other Languages ……………………………………………..................…. 9

The Debate: Identity vs. Tradition …………………………………………......... 10

Historical Overview of Non-Sexist Language to GFL in Spanish …............ 10 

Usage Evolution and Limitations …………………………………...............…. 14

Linguistic Attitudes in the Dominican Republic …………………………….... 17

Methodology ……………………………………………………………………........ 17

Results …………………………………………………………………………........... 21

Grammaticality Judgments ………………………………………….............….. 21

Acceptance and Rejection ………………………………………..............…...… 24 

Discussion ………………………………………………………………......……….. 29

Phonology of GFL and Acceptance ………………………….............………... 29

Singular vs. Plural Forms of GFL ………………………………….............…... 31

Rejection of Dominican Spanish and GFL ………………………...........….... 32

Differences in GFL Content Topics …………………………………............…. 33

Conclusions …………………………………………………………………………... 34

References …………………………………………………………………………..... 37

Appendix A: Demographic and Exposure Questionnaires …………………..40

Appendix B: Gender-Fair Language Survey ………………………………….... 43

Appendix C: Tables ………………………………………………………………..... 54

Appendix D: Figures …………………………………………………………..........55

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	Linguistics
Degree	B.A.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Language, Linguistics Sociology, Sociolinguistics
Keyword	psycholinguistics sociolinguists linguistics
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Jason McLarty, Emory University Yun Kim, Emory University
Committee Members	Susan Tamasi, Emory University Lisa Dillman, Emory University Donald Tuten, Emory University

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