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Gender-neutral language is language that avoids assumptions about the social gender or biological sex of people referred to in speech or writing. In contrast to most other Indo-European languages, English does not retain grammatical gender and most of its nouns, adjectives and pronouns are therefore not gender-specific.
For example, advocates of gender-neutral language challenge the traditional use of masculine nouns and pronouns (e.g. "man" and "he") when referring to two or more genders or to a person of an unknown gender in most Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic languages. This stance is often inspired by feminist ideas about gender equality. [1]
Gender-neutral language or gender-inclusive language is language that avoids reference towards a particular sex or gender. In English, this includes use of nouns that are not gender-specific to refer to roles or professions, [1] formation of phrases in a coequal manner, and discontinuing the collective use of male or female terms. [2]
Example of gender-neutral masculine: English (5) a. If anybody comes, tell him. masculine him used to refer to a person of unknown sex b. *If anybody comes, tell her. feminine her is not used to refer to a person of unknown sex Example of collective masculine: French (6) a. Vos amis sont arrivés — Ils étaient en avance.
Another example of lack of parallelism would be the use, in the same article, of first names for women and last names for men, unless the people involved have a documented preference in this regard. The Manual of Style section on gender-neutral language states, "Use gender-neutral language where this can be done with clarity and precision ...
Old English had multiple generic nouns for "woman" stretching across all three genders: for example, in addition to the neuter wif and the masculine wifmann listed above, there was also the feminine frowe. [2]: 6 For the gender-neutral nouns for "child", there was the neuter bearn and the neuter cild (compare English child).
The 'Generalizations' section describes the reverse of the 'Pronoun Problem' - it is when gender neutral terms are assumed to be gender specific. Often, the gender assumed is male. This section also describes problems with the use of female-gendered words in ways that are condescending, but may not be intentional.
For example, gender can indirectly influence the productivity of noun-patterns in what he calls the "Israeli" language: the Israeli neologism מברשת (mivréshet, transl. brush) is fitted into the feminine noun-pattern mi⌂⌂é⌂et (each ⌂ represents a slot where a radical is inserted) because of the feminine gender of the matched words ...