Secondary World Gendered Language Idea

[alias_sqbr]

Based on a dream, after trying to get my head around Chinese and Japanese name usage, and vaguely inspired by Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand.

A society doesn't gender anyone by default, in formal language. Gendered terms like "she" or "daughter" exist, but are only used for someone the speaker is on close personal terms with. Using gendered words/pronouns for someone is vaguely equivalent to using someone's given name in Japanese, switching to informal pronouns in German/French etc. Except without the "you can refer to subordinates informally" thing.

Or maybe with that, depending on whether you want to make a less ungendered society or one that's just as gendered as ours but in a different way.

Because I found the ungenderedness of the Radch interesting but the idea of No-one Having Gender made me a bit dysphoric, and I've been pondering how you could have a society that doesn't gender by default but still HAS gender.

It's possible I've seen this elsewhere and forgot!

EDIT: Comments have made me realise I was being a bit lazy with my thinking. There's really two related ideas here:
1) a language where gendered terms are only used for those you're close to etc.
2) a society where people are not treated as having any particular gender unless you're close to them etc.

A society like 2 would plausibly use a language like 1 (or a language that doesn't gender anyone at all), but a language like 1 would not necessarily imply a society like 2.

Comments

[winterbird]

This sounds really awesome though, and now I'm having thinky-thoughts about it as well. Maybe it is out there already, but I've never seen anything like it, and I sort of like the idea of like, default non-gender-by-default but where then gender - for those who want it - can have it as a form of intimacy.

[lilacsigil]

You could easily do this without drastically changing the Japanese language - except for levels of politeness. There's very few specifically gendered terms (and obviously little use of pronouns) unless you're talking about family members or in technical terms like for animal breeding. However, you constantly establish position and hierarchy along various axes of relationships, and one of these is gender. So while in theory the language looks very lightly gendered, in practice it is extremely gendered in most contexts. A different historical development of Japanese could be non-gendered in the way you describe.

[naraht]

You might know this already but there are already quite a few natural human languages that don't use gendered pronouns, including Finnish, Hungarian, Persian and Bengali. Which seems to show fairly clearly that linguistic gender and social gender are not very strongly linked!

Your idea is also very interesting. I can't off the top of my head think of a natural language that does that, but there's so much diversity among human languages that I wouldn't rule it out.

[rattfan]

You beat me to it; I was going to mention Finnish. I found Finland very comfortable to be in (Worldcon 2017) for that reason. Their language treats everyone simply as humans and it follows that so do they.

[naraht]

I'm not convinced that it does follow, actually! I don't think you can generalise about the societies that use gender-neutral pronouns. Particularly given the headlines out of Hungary recently...

ETA: Similarly spoken Chinese apparently uses gender-neutral third person pronouns and the written language also did until the 20th century.

[alias_sqbr]

gender - for those who want it - can have it as a form of intimacy

Right!

[alias_sqbr]

Yes, I'm writing a fic about trans people in 19th century Japan and it's interesting how in some ways it's easy for them to avoid being (mis)gendered and other ways EVERYTHING IS GENDERED OMG.

[alias_sqbr]

Yes, it's something I've seen discussed a bit, especially in international trans/non binary circles (the consensus from trans people from those countries being that it makes a lot less difference to the experience of being misgendered etc than those of us used to more explicitly gendered languages tend to imagine) Your comment made me realise I was thus a bit lazy in drawing the line between gendered language and gendered society in my post, so I added a little edit about that.

[alias_sqbr]

Afaict that kind of language does make it easier to avoid gender essentialism etc in some ways, but plenty of VERY sexist/heteronormative societies have relatively ungendered languages eg ancient China, as naraht said. But in the other direction, it can be hard NOT to gender people even with the best of intentions if the language makes it more difficult, as in something like Spanish where lots of words are gendered. So it's not nothing.

[rattfan]

I was talking about my own experience as a trans person in Finland as opposed to here in Australia. I think I'm entitled to do that. But whatever.

[alias_sqbr]

Oh I'm sorry! Yes I can definitely see how that would have been a good experience. I thought you were making a comment on Finnish society in general, I apologise for misunderstanding.

[rattfan]

Insofar as it might relate to Finnish society, all I have to go on is the theory that words shape thought. You might not think so much about gender if your language was not very gendered. So I thought that the way I was treated in Finland could relate to their language. That's as far as I can go with it; it's not like I've studied the subject.

[pebblerocker]

I like this <3

[alias_sqbr]

Thank you!