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    Published : 2025-08-04
    Vol. 73 No. 5 (2025)

    Gender Language in Public Space: Results of a Linguistic Landscape Research of German Public Space

    Anna Dargiewicz

    https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8258-6540

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rh25735.2

    Abstract

    A gender-conscious use of language is based on expressing both male and female as well as other gender identities. The legal introduction of the third gender option “diverse” in Germany in 2018 sparked a heated and emotional debate about gendering. The discussion about a multi-gender or gender-neutral spelling continues unabated. The implementation of equal linguistic treatment of the genders in the texts to be drafted in accordance with the General Equal Treatment Act (Allgemeines Gleichbehandlungsgesetz) is often the cause of linguistic chaos and incorrect formulations of German language texts. Thus, gendering is seen on the one hand as an expression of equality, and on the other hand as an expression of linguistic mischief and paternalism. Most texts appearing in the public sphere are also formulated in gender-equitable language, although this is not always done consistently. As a result, we see expressions that are controversial, strange or even funny (such as Berliner*in as a gender-equitable expression for Berliner/Krapfen – donut), for which the corpus analyzed in this article also provides evidence. The aim of this article is to reflect on the problem of gender-equitable language in contemporary German on the basis of the results of a corpus-based empirical study of the German public sphere.

    Keywords:

    gendering, gender, public space, gender language, gender-sensitive language, gender-neutralizing, different



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    Roczniki Humanistyczne · ISSN 0035-7707 | eISSN 2544-5200 | DOI: 10.18290/rh
    © The Learned Society of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin & The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Faculty of Humanities

    Articles are licensed under a Creative Commons  Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)