On the correlation of gender neutral and gender specific vocabulary in the texts of modern British and American newspapers

the article concerns the tendency of using gender-neutral vocabulary in American and British press. At the first stage of the research an overview of theoretical studies is carried out for the purpose of covering the most essential aspects of feminist language criticism. The second part of the research is an analysis of language material selected from the authoritative American and British newspapers such as The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post and some others. The sampling amounts to 150 vocabulary units. The authors analyse the root of gender-specific vocabulary and the degree of its use in the newspaper texts. The quantitative analysis result reveals the predominance of gender-specific vocabulary over the gender-neutral vocabulary. The authors come to a conclusion that many linguistic innovations, proposed by the advocates of the feminist language reform are not supported by the factual language material and have not become widespread. The exceptions are some words and constructions that have already entered the general use, such as “a police officer” or “a firefighter”, as well as the construction that includes the pronoun “their” with an indefinite pronoun as its antecedent.

feminist language criticism, gender stereotypes, gender-neutral vocabulary, gender-specific vocabulary, newspaper texts, gender-specific job titles