Autrice, auteure, auteur? Between social norms, usage and morphological awareness
Résumé
We examined the spontaneous production of feminine counterparts of three categories of job names ("stable" i.e., one attested masculine and one attested feminine form, "unstable" i.e., one attested masculine and more than one feminine form and "epicene" i.e., same form to designate male and female protagonists) by native speakers of French. We identified three possible sources to explain the linguistic irregularity/instability of some feminine forms: the use of language, the linguistic competence of native speakers and their sociological profiles (i.e., social gender, age, profession, territory). A pen and paper questionnaire collected data from 94 participants and revealed that a third of the produced forms totally resist to feminization confirming the male bias described in the previous literature (e.g., Gygax & Gabriel, 2008). Moreover, our data clarifies that the male bias effect leads to a conflict between male social norms and participant's awareness of the current political trend to make women more visible in society.
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