False Dichotomies: Grammar and Sexual Polarity

Abstract

In Chapter 4, we examined the meaning of sex differences in linguistic behaviour. But the stereotypical interpretation of those behavioural differences is only one example of a much more pervasive cultural phenomenon: the tendency to classify anything and everything in terms of the opposition masculine versus feminine. Yin and yang; animus and anima; the pairing turns up so often, not surprisingly it is sometimes taken for a universal principle of human thought and categorisation.