Animals and Gender in Present – Day English
DOI: 10.18355/XL.2016.09.01.110-126
Abstract
This paper is the contribution to gender studies providing an answer to the core question: “How is gender assigned to animal nouns in English?” In this analysis the focus is predominantly on gender in animals. The introductory part summarizes recent descriptions of gender assignment in animal nouns and looks at grammarians´ treatment of “gender in present - day English”.
A detailed analysis of gender assignment to animal names is based on zoological articles concerning animal species ranging from insects to apes. The corpus for this analysis includes all National Geographic articles concerning animal species published between 1979 and 2014.
Key words
gender markers, gender distinctions, animal nouns, National Geographic
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