2017/09/19 by Gertrude Postl · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Gender Studies in Language
paper · doi:10.4324/9781315758152-25
openalex publication_date 2017/09/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Concern with language has not been limited to feminist philosophy, but already emerged in the early debates of the second wave of the Women&s;s Movement during the late 1960s and 1970s in the US and in Europe. Feminists pointed out the exploitative relationship, which had never been admitted, between the complementary elements of the respective pairs: "Language, however formal it may be, feeds on blood, on flesh, on material elements". The idea of a distinct feminine style has been considered by feminist philosophers in relation to speech as well as writing. Seeming cultural differences between women and men in terms of behavior, looks, profession, language use, and others, were taken to be just pseudo-differences, still operating according to the order of the same, with woman being assigned the complementary part respective to the original masculine one. Among US feminist philosophers a dominant figure in the discussion of language is, of course, Mary Daly.