This article – featured in The Linguist 60(5) – was inspired by an exchange on the Letters page from The Linguist 60(2), where a fellow linguist expressed her frustration over the problematic use of the gendered saying ‘come on guys’. It made me reflect upon the languages I use every day and pondered over my role as a language professional.
With June being the start to Pride season, which, for me, is the prime time to celebrate each and every one of us; I thought it appropriate and timely to revisit this piece of writing and to give myself time to check how I have been doing with regard to my conscious word choice.
I have been providing language services to academic researchers specialising in fields related to language, gender and sexuality, and have realised that making best efforts to inform ourselves of current usage and good practice is something that is important for us as linguists, and which we ought to do with humility. I enjoy comparing languages, and as someone whose first language is Cantonese, I find it fascinating how gender stereotypes and assumptions vary between Cantonese (or written Traditional Chinese) and English.
Against a backdrop of hegemonic masculinity in Hong Kong, it is interesting that words that have traditionally been gendered male in English have never had any gender connotations in Cantonese. While we have to be cautious when dealing with, for example, ‘manpower’ (‘staffing’), ‘man-made’ (‘artificial’) and ‘mankind’ (‘humankind’) in English, this has not been a problem in Cantonese. The ‘man’ in these terms is 人 (‘people’; jan): 人力 (lit. ‘people + force’; jan-lik), 人造 (lit. ‘people + to make’; jan-zou) and 人類 (lit. ‘people + kind’; jan-leoi).
Some outdated descriptive titles, for instance, ‘salesman’, ‘policeman’ and ‘fireman’, are also gender-neutral in Cantonese: 售貨員 (lit. ‘to sell + goods + member’; sau-fo-jyun), 警察 (lit. ‘to alert + to examine’; ging-caat) and 消防員 (lit. ‘to eliminate + to prevent + member’; siu-fong-jyun). This appears to have prevented associated reflection and reproduction of traditional gender roles. When it comes to the gendered word ‘guys’, as in ‘bad guys’, Cantonese uses 壞人 (lit. ‘bad + people’; waai-jan), or 各位 (‘everyone’, lit. ‘every + position’; gok-wai) for ‘guys’ as a generic term.
Given these examples, it may seem reasonable to conclude that Cantonese is a fairly inclusive language, but is it? Sadly, gender bias is able to show itself in myriad ways. To date, people who identify as non-binary or who are intersex are still excluded from the general discourse in Cantonese, which also features gendered pronouns, negative stereotypes and pernicious gender/sexuality-related assumptions.
I speak of ‘best efforts’ because I acknowledge the possibility that our own backgrounds and sociocultural experience may have considerable influence on the ways we see the world. Therefore avoiding the unconscious biases in the languages we use in professional and social settings can, at times, be difficult.
We all make mistakes and we grow by learning from them. Like language, which is alive and always changing, we, too, should constantly challenge our assumptions, renew our understanding, and reflect on our experience. I believe that it is part of our duty as linguists to help shift the paradigm, as we possess the linguistic power that is fundamental to making a real impact.
Gendered language that is rooted in our everyday life may be a sensitive subject to deal with, but if we start today by looking for inclusive alternatives when we speak and write, or even when we are working with our clients or teaching our students, I trust we can contribute to changing attitudes for the better.
Image: Tim Mossholder