Is ‘he’ still here? ; Exploring the contemporary use of masculine subject pronouns for women in Dutch dialects

Abstract Various non-standard language varieties in the Netherlands traditionally allow for the use of masculine personal subject pronouns (i.e. regionally distinct variants of hij ‘he’) in reference to women. While this practice is well-documented within Dutch dialectology, especially during the twentieth century, it is unclear to what extent this feature still exists nowadays. Moreover, the use of masculine subject forms for female reference has not previously been described for Limburgian dialects. This paper offers a start to filling these gaps, by providing insight into the contemporary u... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Piepers, Joske
Backus, Ad
Swanenberg, Jos
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Erscheinungsdatum: 2023
Reihe/Periodikum: Linguistics in the Netherlands ; Linguistics in the Netherlands 2023 ; volume 40, page 194-209 ; ISSN 0929-7332 1569-9919
Verlag/Hrsg.: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Schlagwörter: Linguistics and Language / Language and Linguistics
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-27045208
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/avt.00087.pie

Abstract Various non-standard language varieties in the Netherlands traditionally allow for the use of masculine personal subject pronouns (i.e. regionally distinct variants of hij ‘he’) in reference to women. While this practice is well-documented within Dutch dialectology, especially during the twentieth century, it is unclear to what extent this feature still exists nowadays. Moreover, the use of masculine subject forms for female reference has not previously been described for Limburgian dialects. This paper offers a start to filling these gaps, by providing insight into the contemporary use of ‘he’ for women in Dutch dialects, with a specific focus on occurrences in Dutch Limburg. We report on a Twitter query and three interviews, showing (i) that the use of ‘he’ for women still exists in various Dutch dialects, and (ii) how native speakers of a Limburgian dialect use and perceive this feature of their dialect.