Imagine the following scene: the musicians were walking through the station. As the weather was forecast to be fine, several women had no jackets.
When you read the second sentence, did you expect to find that women were part of the group? Probably not, according to the conclusions of studies in the psychology of language on grammatical gender and our brain. Overview to understand why “the masculine prevails”, in spite of himself.
One gender, two different meanings
When reading the name “musicians”, two interpretations are possible. The “specific” meaning refers to an exclusively male group, a bit like an orchestra composed only of men. This is what you were taught at school, even before addressing the “generic” meaning, which refers to a mixed group of men and women. In the generic masculine, whether there are one or twenty women in the orchestra, only one man is enough to speak of “musicians”.
For a single masculine form, there are therefore two meanings. Does our brain have a preference for one or the other?
Studies in the psychology of language show that our brain tends to choose the specific meaning more often than the generic meaning when it encounters a masculine noun. Thus, reading that “researchers have made a discovery”, you are more likely to imagine men in lab coats than a mixed group of scientists.
Let’s continue the reasoning by remembering the sentence from the beginning.
The musicians walked through the station. As the weather was forecast to be fine, several women had no jackets.
The team of Pascal Gygax, from the University of Fribourg, asked volunteer subjects if the second sentence seemed to them to be a possible sequel to the first. Their rapid response is revealing: subjects less often judge the second sentence as a possible sequel to the first when it mentions women rather than men. In other words, when reading a masculine plural noun, our brain tends to imagine a group of men. He will then be surprised to learn that one or more women are part of the group. Like it or not, our brain has chosen the specific meaning.
For what ? If a word has two different meanings, the brain wants to quickly impose a meaning on it. He will go more often towards the specific meaning, in particular because he learned it before the credits. Going for the specific is its easiest shortcut.
Biased representations
Beyond laboratory studies, what are the effects of these biases on our representation of the world? Do we share things on a daily basis?
Let’s try an experiment. Write down five actors you love on a piece of paper.
Then count the number of men and women on your list. Did you nominate more men than women? Experiments conducted by Markus Brauer and Michaël Landry at the University of Clermont-Ferrand show that the use of a masculine-feminine doublet (eg: actors or actresses) rather than a generic masculine (eg. : actors) encourages subjects to nominate more women. Bring up the feminine designation, and women come to mind more spontaneously.
In another experiment conducted by Armand Chatard and his colleagues in Clermont-Ferrand, young people aged 14 to 15 were surveyed about their prospects for success in various careers. For occupations that are typically associated with men (eg mechanic, computer scientist, electrician), adolescent girls believe they have a better chance of succeeding when they are presented with a doublet rather than a noun in the masculine. The simple fact of naming the existence of the trade of mechanic or computer scientist increases the idea that a woman can succeed in this trade.
Towards inclusive writing
Many people claim that we avoid the use of the generic masculine to write more inclusively. Fortunately, the French language offers us many strategies to adopt to reach a greater number. Here are a few :
Use doublets (e.g. male and female students, male and female readers);
Use collective nouns (e.g. student community, readership);
Use epicene nouns (e.g. colleagues, members).
Research must now focus on these different forms of inclusive writing. The objective: to determine their impact on reading and writing and to ensure that these new ways of writing are accessible to everyone and remain consistent with French grammar, spelling and typography. And you, will you try the experience of inclusive writing?