ABSTRACT
A research approach initiated by the New Women’s Liberation Movement, which was established in the Anglo-American sphere in the mid-seventies through publications by Key, Lakoff and Thorne/Henley (all 1975). Whereas the mainstream linguistics current then was dominated by structuralist priorities such as language system before language use, homogeneity before heterogeneity, synchrony before diachrony ( synchrony vs diachrony), linguistic competence of an ideal speaker/hearer before language use of individual speakers ( competence vs performance), feminist linguistics studies the gender-typical language use and the gender-specific asymmetries (established through thousands of years of tradition) in the language system and makes a connection between linguistic and social discrimination. In English, the ambiguity of man (for humans in general or for male humans specifically), problems of pronominalization and of the vocabulary (specific terms for females are usually derived from terms for males) are the critical points for departure (see for a summary Baron 1986, Cameron 1985). In German and French. the problems of linguistic inequality are enhanced through the grammatical gender system and its connection with the extralinguistic category of ‘sex”. Particularly the ambiguity of the masculine form, which can refer both to male referents and to
language of law and administration, which are by now already being practiced. Empirical studies of language use within the framework of conversation analysis deal mainly with gender-specific discourse behavior as well as with problems of the influence of the sex on linguistic socialization. In order to be able to use verifiable results (not merely uncertain tendencies) as the basis for the changes pursued, greater differentiation in the construction of hypotheses is necessary; especially, the isolation of the variable ‘gender’ must be given up in favor of its interplay with other variables, such as age, status, nationality etc. The comprehensive success of feminist language-political demands is astounding, as here a Europe-wide language change has been set in motion by a decentralized group without any political power.
