UC Berkeley

In the field of linguistics, the terms linguistic or grammatical gender are somewhat of a misnomer. Instead of placing focus on the complex human quality of gender, they point to a particular theory of morphosyntax entitled agreement-based systems of nominal classification, more commonly referred to as the feature of gender. Any language in which every noun falls into one of two or more nominal classes, in which there is a semantic basis for those nominal classes, and in which morphosyntactic agreement is evidenced qualifies as a language with the feature of gender, while nonqualifying languages are referred to as “genderless” (Corbett, 1991; Dixon, 1982; Kramer, 2015). While there is evidence to suggest that (minimally) masculine-feminine languages like Spanish and Greek give this feature its most commonly-used name (Corbeill, 2015), the concept includes languages whose systems of nominal classification have no basis on the human quality of gender, and it cannot detect normatively gender-specific meanings and distinctions in the other languages of the world.This dissertation presents an alternate definition and theory of the term linguistic gender (disambiguated here using the reordered term gender in language) that is equipped to identify normatively gendered meanings and distinctions in the domain of personal reference. The crux of this theory is that there is probably no such thing as a genderless language, meaning that every language contains some feature of gender that meaningfully bears upon the gender of the person being referenced. The theory is supported by a featural typology with data from a great number of typologically distinct world languages and presents eight features, some of which are underresearched or unstudied: lexical gender, pronominal gender, affixal gender, classifier gender, orthographic gender, sign gender, particle gender, and (minimally) masculine-feminine morphosyntactic gender. These features are arranged along a scale of embeddedness, revealing two extremes: the grammatically unembedded feature of lexical gender and the most highly embedded feature of (minimally) masculine-feminine morphosyntactic gender.Throughout the text, special focus is placed on the communities of people who face challenges expressing their gender identities linguistically, including but not limited to nonbinary, trans, and other gender nonconforming people. For this reason, the mechanism behind the use of gender in language is also interrogated and described as a moment of snap judgment in which speakers make a decision about how to gender the referent in lieu of the referent’s formal declaration about which gendered linguistic forms they would like to be addressed with. For this reason, normative masculine and feminine forms are described in detail along with gender-neutral forms and gender-inclusive forms adopted by members of the queer and genderqueer communities for the purpose of adequate linguistic gender self-expression. Relatedly, the consequences of misgendering are described and cited as being hazardous to gender nonconforming people and access to gender-inclusive language is defended as a fundamental human right.