Round Women and Long Men

Shape, Size, and the Meanings of Gender in New Guinea and Beyond

Bibliographic Data

ID4743567
AuthorsAlexandra Y Aikhenvald (0000-0003-1866-7869, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume54
Issue1
Pages33-86
Publication date2012-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnthropological linguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-5483 • E-ISSN: 1944-6527
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/anl.2012.0005
OpenAlexW1964619369
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited36

The concept of gender has three faces. Natural gender (N-gender, or sex), Social gender (S-gender), which reflects the social implications of being a man or a woman (or perhaps something in between), and Linguistic gender (L-gender). L-gender tends to mirror social and cultural stereotypes of S-gender. Recurrent correlations between shape, size, and L-gender choice are a feature of languages of the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea. After a brief summary of L-gender and the principles of its choice across languages, a detailed analysis is offered of L-gender choice in Manambu, a Ndu language from the Sepik region. It is shown that gender assignment to humans correlates with N-gender and reflects S-gender status. Other nouns have no fixed gender. Their gender depends on the physical properties of the noun's referent. We then turn to a cross-linguistic survey of other languages, in New Guinea and beyond, where shape and size are deployed as semantic parameters in L-gender choice. Further semantic correlates of gender assignment in the languages of the world include the roles of referents in myths, and salient properties correlating with the position of S-gender (especially relevant for L-gender choice and L-genders switches for humans

Ethnology · Gender disparity · Gender history · Gender identity · Gender psychology · Geography · Grammatical Gender · Linguistics · New guinea · Noun · Referent · Salient · Sociology · Gender Studies · Gender Studies in Language · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Multilingual Education and Policy · Psychology · Social Psychology