GENDER: SOCIAL OR LINGUISTIC?

In order to explore whether gender perception of noun referents depends on stereotypes as social constructs or grammatical gender as a linguistic category, ten pairs of near-synonymous nouns of different grammatical genders were compared. Their gender scores were calculated on the basis of the adjectives that our participants used to reflect their immediate associations to the referents. The near-synonymous pairs were selected as a testing tool because we were able to measure the effect of two different factors on the gender perception of their referents at the same time: the effect of concepts and stereotypes that the participants associated with both near-synonyms, and the effect of their respective grammatical genders. Our analysis found that grammatical gender had no impact on gender assignment and that it was the underlying concept and the stereotype as a social construct that ultimately determined gender perception of the referents. Since our findings are contrary to earlier research, the article concludes with a number of suggestions for future research that would re-examine these opposing views.