Grammatical Gender in Interaction: Cultural and Cognitive Aspects (Brill's Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture, 9)

In Grammatical Gender in Interaction: Cultural and Cognitive Aspects Angeliki Alvanoudi explores the relation between grammatical gender in person reference, culture and cognition in Modern Greek conversation. The author investigates the cultural and cognitive aspects of grammatical gender, by drawing on feminist sociolinguistic and non-linguistic approaches, cognitive linguistics, research on linguistic relativity, studies on person reference in interaction and conversation analysis. The study presented in this book shows that the use of grammatical gender contributes to the routine achievement of sociocultural gender in interaction and that grammatical gender guides speakers'thinking of referents as female or male at the time of speaking. Contents 6 Acknowledgements 10 Phonetic Symbols 11 List of Abbreviations 12 Transcription Conventions 13 Chapter 1 Introduction 16 Contextualizing the Problem 16 On Grammatical Gender and Culture 19 On Grammatical Gender and Cognition 21 Summary of the Argument to be Presented in the Book 23 Chapter 2 Grammatical Gender 28 Introduction 28 Noun Classes or Genders 28 Grammatical Gender in Modern Greek 34 Grammatical Gender and Reference: Preliminary Remarks 41 Summary 46 Chapter 3 Grammatical Gender and the Intersection of Sociocultural Gender/Sex 47 Introduction 47 The Intersection of Gender/Sex in Feminist Theory 48 Cultural Aspects of Grammatical Gender: The Perspective of Linguistics 51 Grammatical Gender and the Construction of Gender Identities 52 Grammatical Gender and the Maintenance of Gender Hierarchy 55 Cultural Aspects of Grammatical Gender: The Perspective of Feminist Non-Linguistic Theories 62 Summary 65 Chapter 4 Grammatical Gender and Speakers’ Cognition 67 Introduction 67 Cognitive Aspects of Grammatical Gender 67 Grammatical Gender and Conceptual Categorization 67 Grammatical Gender and the Linguistic Mediation of Thought 74 Indications of the Cognitive Role of Grammatical Gender: Empirical Studies 80 Summary 86 Chapter 5 Grammatical Gender, Culture and Cognition in Interaction 87 The Research Question 87 Grammatical Gender and Person Reference in Interaction 89 Indexing Gender: The Role of Grammatical Gender 94 The Generic Use of the Masculine Gender and Default Inferences 96 Approaching Grammatical Gender in Interaction through the Lens of Conversation Analysis 99 Gender Membership Categories and Grammatical Gender 103 Chapter 6 The Empirical Investigation of Grammatical Gender in Interaction 107 Introduction 107 The Routine Achievement of Sociocultural Gender in Interaction: The Role of Grammatical Gender 110 Self-reference and Grammatical Gender 110 Reference to Recipient(s) and Grammatical Gender 121 Reference to Third Person(s) and Grammatical Gender 126 Grammatical Gender and the Relevance of Sociocultural Gender 131 The Non-match between Grammatical Gender and Referents’ Sex 138 Conclusions 143 Indications of the Cognitive Role of Grammatical Gender in Interaction 144 Repair: Introductory Remarks 144 Grammatical Gender as an Item of Repair 148 Other Indications 169 Conclusions 179 Chapter 7 What Can We Conclude? 181 ‘Thinking for Speaking’ in Interaction 181 Sexism in Interaction: Fact or Fiction? 183 Reconsidering Gender Performativity 186 Grammatical Gender in Interaction: A Summary 190 References 192 Index of Authors 210 Index of Subjects 213 In Grammatical Gender in Interaction: Cultural and Cognitive Aspects Angeliki Alvanoudi explores the relation between grammatical gender in person reference, culture and cognition in Modern Greek conversation. The author investigates the cultural and cognitive aspects of grammatical gender, by drawing on feminist sociolinguistic and non-linguistic approaches, cognitive linguistics, research on linguistic relativity, studies on person reference in interaction and conversation analysis. The study presented in this book shows that the use of grammatical gender contributes to the routine achievement of sociocultural gender in interaction and that grammatical gender guides speakers' thinking of referents as female or male at the time of speaking In this book, Angeliki Alvanoudi explores the relation between grammatical gender in person reference, culture and cognition in Greek interaction