Dacă nu mai există limitări de gen în arealul profesional, de ce ar mai exista ele în limbă? / If there are no gender limitations in the professional realm, why would they persist in language?

Abstract

The historical evolution of languages has been more than once influenced by the sheer influence of scholars who re-channeled some linguistic phenomena or simply consecrated aspects of colloquial usage. This happened in the history of Romanian language when the Latinist scholars cleansed the lexicon and parts of morphology of various non-Latin borrowings and derivations whereas they revived or inserted Latin formations. Taking account of this, it would be hard to justify the rejection of many feminized denominations of professions used already by people in everyday conversations. With the advance of technology and with the support of the third wave of feminism women are able nowadays to embrace whatever professional field they may want. On the other hand, there are numerous international conventions that acknowledge the role played by women in the setting up of the postindustrial society. That is why my article is a plea in favor of a linguistic updating, namely the acceptance into the literary language of feminized denominations of professions.

Keywords

• gender linguistics
• gender studies
• usage
• norm
• feminine suffixes
• equality of chances