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How gender shapes the world, Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, (2016), Oxford:

Oxford University Press, ISBN 9780198723752. pp. 271

Article in Sociolinguistic Studies · June 2017

DOI: 10.1558/sols.33851

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Review

How gender shapes the world

Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (2016)

Oxford: Oxford University Press

ISBN 9780198723752. Pp. 271

Reviewed by Erika Sandman

The concept of gender is a multifaceted notion with three different meanings.

While natural gender refers to the biological division into males and females,
social gender is related to the norms of being a man or a woman. Linguistic
gender (often referred to in the literature as grammatical gender) is a grammatical
category that divides nouns into different classes, typically masculine and femi-
nine. It is a type of noun classification strategy that is intimately related to other
constructions specialized in classifying nouns, such as numeral classifiers. The
current volume explores the interplay between these three notions of gender. Due
to her background in descriptive field linguistics and language typology, Alex-
andra Y. Aikhenvald puts a lot of emphasis on the notion of linguistic gender, its
grammatical expression and its interaction with conventions of talking across
cultures, but she also investigates other issues related to the relationship between
natural gender, social roles and linguistic behavior, such as male and female speech
and the role of men and women in language change and language maintenance.
The book is organized into twelve chapters, with each of them devoted to a
specific theme that somehow connects to the relationship between the three
notions of gender. While chapters 2 to 8 mainly focus on the role of linguistic
gender in grammar and discourse, chapters 9 to 11 take a somewhat broader
perspective on male and female speech practices, as well as meanings of linguistic
categories as reflections of social roles and social inequality. The data for the

Affiliation

University of Helsinki, Finland

email: erika.sandman@helsinki.fi

SOLS VOL 11.2–4 2017 483–485 https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.33851

© 2018, EQUINOX PUBLISHING
484 SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDIES

book is drawn from over 700 languages, including both first-hand field data from
the author’s own fieldwork (mainly in the Amazon and Papua New-Guinea) and
data from published sources. The introduction to the data in chapter 1 is very brief
and the reader might want to know more about the process of the compilation of
the corpus. Nevertheless, the amount of languages included and the information
on their social environment is impressive and the book contains rich anecdotal
evidence on language use across different cultures. It is also important to note that
the purpose of the book is not to present a comprehensive typology of linguistic
gender, but to investigate socio-cultural practices that connect linguistic gender
with cultural stereotypes, as well as norms of male and female speech.
Chapter 1 serves as an introduction to the topic of the book. The author defines
the three notions of gender and discusses some preliminary examples of their
interplay (e.g. how transsexual people show their identity by manipulating lingui-
stic gender). Chapter 2 is devoted to a discussion of the expression of linguistic
gender, including grammatical means of marking linguistic gender, principles of
gender assignment (such as humanness, sex and animacy) and markedness in
gender systems. In a number of languages of the world, inanimate objects are
assigned linguistic gender according to their shape and size. The linguistic gender
of inanimates can also carry positive or negative overtones. This is the topic of
chapter 3. Two alternative scenarios are found. In some languages, masculine
gender is associated with large size and long, slender shape, while feminine
gender is associated with small size and roundish shape. Alternatively, masculine
can be associated with small size and feminine with large size. Chapter 4 deals
with the use of linguistic gender in discourse. While the most commonly known
function of linguistic gender is differentiating meanings of nouns and therefore
distinguishing males from females, gender marking can also signal specificity or
definiteness of its referent, or it can be connected with topicality, foregrounding
and backgrounding. Chapter 5 describes how linguistic gender relates to other
grammatical categories of nouns, such as classifiers, number, case and declension
type, and the ways in which functions of linguistic gender can be expressed by
other nominal categories in genderless languages. Languages can gain or lose
linguistic gender, and gender systems tend to change across time. These
mechanisms of gender development are addressed in chapter 6. The author
discusses different sources of linguistic gender, mechanisms of loss and reinter-
pretation of gender systems and the effects of language contact, language attrition,
language acquisition, aphasia and linguistic reforms. Chapter 7 deals with the
effects of gender reversal – using feminine for a man or masculine for a woman –
and how manipulating linguistic gender can be used for jocular effects, maintain-
ing solidarity between friends or expressing social status and power. Chapter 8
 REVIEW: SANDMAN 485

discusses how meanings of linguistic gender can mirror myths, legends and
beliefs. For example, in the Dyirbal language of Australia, the assignment of
linguistic gender for birds is determined by their role in mythology. Chapter 9
turns to the lexical and grammatical differences between male and female speech.
In some languages (e.g. in Island Carib) there are special dialects for men and
women, while in some languages (e.g. in English) the gender-specific differences
are more difficult to capture. This chapter also discusses how the rising equality of
men and women affects the ways in which male and female forms of speech are
used. Closely related topics are addressed in chapter 10. This chapter discusses
how social gender can be associated with different domains and speech practices
in society and how this affects the language use of men and women. For example,
in many traditional societies there are special speech genres associated with male-
only rituals (e.g. Manambu initiation and harvest rituals in New Guinea). The
chapter also deals with the role of men and women in language change. Chapter
11 analyses how the choice of linguistic gender reflects social structures and social
change. The topics covered include positive overtones of male terms and deroga-
tory overtones of female terms as the expressions of gender asymmetry, as well as
the effects of growing social equality and language reforms in the use of terms of
male or female reference. Finally, chapter 12 summarizes the most important
findings of the study. The book also contains a useful index of languages, topics
and authors for the reader who wants to go back to the primary sources.
All in all, the volume offers a wealth of different perspectives on how
linguistic gender is related to different grammatical and discourse phenomena,
cultural practices and social structures. The data and analysis show convincingly
that principles of gender assignment are far from arbitrary, and gender choices are
intimately connected with the society in which the language is spoken, although
the relationship between linguistic terms, culture and society is not straightfor-
ward. One point of criticism that can be mentioned is that the author has some-
times tried to cover too many topics in one volume so that some relevant issues
are addressed only superficially (a case in point is e.g. the effects of language
acquisition, language disorders and language reforms on linguistic gender on
pages 92–93). However, occasional brevity in treatment of specific topics does
not disturb the overall reading experience very much, since most of the topics in
the volume are dealt with in great breadth and depth. The volume is generally
well-argued and well-organized, which makes it enjoyable to read. How gender
shapes the world is a valuable resource for language typologists and anthropo-
logical linguists, and it can also be recommended to scholars working on
anthropology, sociology and gender studies.

(Received and accepted 6th June 2017).

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