Rabid Feminists and Masculine Doctors: Covert Gender Bias in a Lexicographic Corpus

Lexicography has long been an underestimated but highly influential force in the evolution of the English language. Though many dictionaries cite their mission as descriptive language documentation rather than prescriptive... [ view full abstract ]

Lexicography has long been an underestimated but highly influential force in the evolution of the English language. Though many dictionaries cite their mission as descriptive language documentation rather than prescriptive language policing, they are often considered de facto authorities on word usage by speakers and play a critical role in shaping verbal hygienic practices. Sociolinguists such as Deborah Cameron have argued that these ostensibly objective references in fact perpetuate ingrained gender biases, in that they may employ feminine nouns and pronouns when demonstrating the usage of a negatively connoted word (e.g., “rabid feminist”) and their masculine counterparts in association with positively connoted words (e.g., “a rational man”), and may generally reinforce gender stereotypes when providing examples. This project examines the question of systematic gender bias in dictionary entries, and whether they reflect actual usage patterns. I created a corpus of example phrases/sentences from two major dictionaries, the OED and Merriam Webster, and tracked the incidence of potential gender bias. I compare these findings with the distribution of the same patterns in larger corpora of English language use in the US and UK. Findings from this study provide insight on the role of dictionaries in reflecting and possibly perpetuating gender bias.