Psychological Gender

Abstract

The effect language has on the speaker’s perception of objects and events has long been a subject of debate. Sapir (1944) expressed the view that language influences the way in which the speaker perceives the world, in what is known as linguistic relativity. This idea was expressed more strongly by Whorf (1952, 1956), who wrote:

We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds — and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way — an agreement that holds through our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit and unstated one, but ITS TERMS ARE ABSOLUTELY OBLIGATORY; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees. (1956, pp. 213–214)

There was a mirror behind her and another behind me and she was watching herself in the one behind me, forgetting about the other one in which I could see her face, see her watching the back of my head with pure dissimulation. That’s why nature is “she” and progress is “he”. Nature made the grape arbor but progress made the mirror. William Faulkner, Sanctuary

Sie (die Vernunft) ist weiblich, sie empfangt bloβ, erzeugt nicht. Es ist nicht zufällig, daβ sie, sowohl in den Lateinischen, wie den Germanischen Sprachen, als weiblich auftritt, der Verstand hingegen als mannlich. Schopenhauer, Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde