Does Gender Affect Thought?

The German language is a gendered language. Unlike the romantic languages, such as French and Spanish, German has three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. Linguistic gender is different than cultural gender. A table is die tisch which means it is feminine. This does not mean the table is a female table, the word is simply in the feminine gender.

            In class, the subject of how the language one speaks affects their thoughts and perceptions was touched on. This has been extensively studied specifically with the German language because of the three genders. The foremost question on the subject is whether gender affects thought. Proponents, people who believe gender does affect thought, believe a gender-neutral case should be created. Opponents believe gender does not affect thought and therefore a gender-neutral case does not need to be created.

            One study compared German and Dutch. Dutch has only two genders compared to German’s three. Speakers in this study were asked to classify nouns as masculine, feminine, or neither. Response times were then analyzed. This study found masculine nouns in German were more likely to be classified as gender-specific (Backer and Cuypere, 2011, p. 253). Backer and Cuypere (2011) concluded gender did affect thought and there should be a gender-neutral case because females were being underrepresented in the German language.

            A study done by Bender et al. (2011) focused only on German. This study asked subjects whether a group of letters formed a word. If it did, they were asked what gender the word belonged to. Bender et al. (2011) concluded grammar did not affect thought and therefore a gender-neutral case was not needed.

            Each study approached the subject of gender within German differently. While Backer and Cuypere (2011) used a method of comparison, Bender et al. (2011) only used the German language.

References 

Backer, M. D., & Cuypere, L. D. (2011). The interpretation of masculine personal nouns in German and Dutch: a comparative experimental study. Language Sciences. 34(3), 253-268. doi:10.1016/j.langsci.2011.10.001

Bender, A., Beller, S., & Klauer, K. C. (2011). Grammatical gender in German: a case for linguistic relativity?, The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64(9), 1821-1835, doi: 10.1080/17470218.2011.582128

Gabriel, U., Gygax, P.M., & Sato, S. (2016). Altering male-dominant representations: a study on nominalized adjectives and participles in first and second language German. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 35(6), 667-685. doi: 10.1177/0261927X15625442