From: baron@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Dennis Baron)
Subject: Re: Ships and countries
Organization: University of Illinois
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 15:07:42 GMT

In article <1992Aug30.172740.722@mala.bc.ca> epp@mala.bc.ca (Lorne Epp) writes:
>From: epp@mala.bc.ca (Lorne Epp)
>Subject: Re: Ships and countries
>Date: 30 Aug 92 17:27:40 -0700
>In article <1992Aug30.185048.26292@enea.se>, sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
>> Charles H. Sampson (sampson@nosc.mil) writes:
>> Roger Lustig (roger@crux.Princeton.EDU) writes:
>>>>At any rate, we only gender-inflect to describe sexed things: humans,
>>>>animals.
>>>
>>>     And ships?
>> 
>> It is not unusual that a country is personified by a woman,
>> "Mother Russia" or "Moder Svea" (that's Sweden) for instance,
>> so the use of "she" seems very plausible at least in more poetic
>> contexts. But is the use of "she" as a pronoun for any country
>> common among native speakers in every-day language?
>
>The impression I have is that countries are almost always feminine in 
>formal English.  British writers are more likely to use the feminine
>than Americans are.  In informal English, countries are usually neuter.
>This is only an impression that I formed from general reading; it is
>in no way authoratative.
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>Lorne Epp                                               epp@mala.bc.ca


Metaphorical attribution of gender brings forth from the grammarians
all sorts of claptrap whereby masculines are, in the words of 
James Harris, "conspicuous for the Attributes of imparting or communicating;
or which were by nature active, strong, and efficacious....The Feminine
on the contrary were such, as were conspicuous for the Attributes 
either of receiving, or containing, or of producing and bringing
forth; or which had more of the passive in their nature, than of the
active; or which were particularly beautiful and amiable." Hermes (1751
[1765]), pp. 44-45.

In other words, the grammarians buy the sex-stereotyping of their day
and find justification for it in linguistic structure.  Of course
the grammarians were most of them men.  T. Hilding Svartengren collected
large samples of nonhumans and inanimates personified as feminine,
including warts, guns, screws, houses, and teeth (all from American
popular fiction).  A variety of commentators found sexual significance 
in this.  But no one, as I said, looks at it from a woman's point of view.

Linguists do this too.  Joly (1975): "the feminine is literally seen to be
`dominated' by the masculine, just as the species is subordinated to the
genus."  The feminine for him "is regarded as a potential prey, a power
that has to be destroyed--for sport or food--, hence a dominated power."
Joly does not specify the sex of the speaker, but is there any doubt?

Theories of gender, whether metaphorical or grammatical gender, all take
off from male/female social stereotypes.  Even in such innocuous ways of
looking at gender as a meaningless grammatical class we find attempts
to characterize the noun endings as weak for feminine, strong for masculine.

And of course in the spirit of Genesis, scores of grammarians and linguists
derive feminine forms from masculine, often echoing the wording of 
the OT creation story.Thus according to Meillet, "Most of the feminine
forms originated in masculine forms" (quoted in Istvan Fodor, 1959, on
grammatical gender; cited in _Grammar and Gender_, chapter 6).

Dennis


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