This study uses constructivist language theory based on Lann Hornscheidt’s research as a framework. Grammar is viewed as a form of language use being more or less conventionalized. So, the debate on feminist linguistics is viewed from a new perspective. The study begins with an introduction summarizing the state of research and establishing the research questions. Ch. 2 presents the constructivist framework: The notion of extra-linguistic reality is abandoned and also the idea of language as reflection of reality. The strict distinction between a preliminary language system and language use no longer exists. Ch. 3 provides an overview of German feminist linguistics with a critical perspective on its early discussions. Ch. 4 gives a historical overview on grammar theoretical views on gender. Ch. 5 deals with more recent approaches including diachronic approaches to the question of grammatical gender. The critical evaluation shows that feminist linguistics is now part of different fields of study, even if grammar theorists often do not recognize the results of feminist linguistics. In Ch. 6 a corpus-assisted study of so-called genderfair forms in German is presented and the methodology is explained. In Ch. 7 results are summarized and presented with a particular focus on the usage of genderfair forms with non-human referents. Conclusions from the findings and a general outlook are presented in Ch. 8.

Redefining the Hypernym Mensch:in in German: Gender, Sexuality, and Personhood examines how the verbalization of ‘human’ in gender normative terms results in implicit exclusion. Situated in the tension between traditional rules and progressive language use, this book criticizes the heteronormativity of masculine hypernyms and argues for the adoption of gender-inclusive linguistic practices.

This collection of studies explores recent research in the area of gender and language use experienced around the world. Featuring an interdisciplinary and global approach, the contributors demonstrate how focus on gender and language creates the lived experience. The studies in this book use gender and language to analyze a broad range of topics including religion, politics, education and sexuality. Contributions include the use of language of a new female bishop in Canada, hetronormativity in language use in Croatia, women's magazines in Japan, and the electoral code in Cameroon. Using critical/feminist discourse analysis, the chapters represent scholarship from Britain, Europe, North America, Asia and Africa. Readers in applied linguistics, sociology, women’s studies and education who are interested in language and its power in creating the lived experience will find this book full of intriguing and illuminating connections.

This book advances the theorization of normativity as a key concept in language and sexuality studies, bringing together some of the author’s previous work with new material for a comprehensive exploration of the influence of normativity on the relationship between language and sexuality. The first section of the book outlines fundamental areas of inquiry in language and sexuality studies today, with a focus on queer linguistic inquiry, and elucidates the book’s theoretical frameworks around normativity. Chapters in the section reflect on the ways in which normativity shapes sexuality-related language, how language is employed to convey sexual normativities and queer linguistic challenges for the use of research methods in the discipline through a discussion of their implementation in corpus linguistics. The second part of the book builds on these theoretical foundations by featuring seven case studies that illustrate a diverse range of methods and language data, with a concluding chapter considering the implications of their findings for furthering theoretical debates and future research on normativity in language and sexuality studies. This volume will be of interest to scholars in language and sexuality, language and gender, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, applied linguistics and corpus linguistics.

Habeas Viscus focuses attention on the centrality of race to notions of the human. Alexander G. Weheliye develops a theory of "racializing assemblages," taking race as a set of sociopolitical processes that discipline humanity into full humans, not-quite-humans, and nonhumans. This disciplining, while not biological per se, frequently depends on anchoring political hierarchies in human flesh. The work of the black feminist scholars Hortense Spillers and Sylvia Wynter is vital to Weheliye's argument. Particularly significant are their contributions to the intellectual project of black studies vis-à-vis racialization and the category of the human in western modernity. Wynter and Spillers configure black studies as an endeavor to disrupt the governing conception of humanity as synonymous with white, western man. Weheliye posits black feminist theories of modern humanity as useful correctives to the "bare life and biopolitics discourse" exemplified by the works of Giorgio Agamben and Michel Foucault, which, Weheliye contends, vastly underestimate the conceptual and political significance of race in constructions of the human. Habeas Viscus reveals the pressing need to make the insights of black studies and black feminism foundational to the study of modern humanity.

Grammar is seen as a complex sign system, and, as a consequence, grammatical change always comprises semantic change. The book introduces the concept of connecting grammaticalisation to describe the formation, restructuring and dismantling of such complex paradigms. It offers a broad general discussion of theoretical issues and three case studies

Winner of the International Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction Animal tracks, word magic, the speech of stones, the power of letters, and the taste of the wind all figure prominently in this intellectual tour de force that returns us to our senses and to the sensuous terrain that sustains us. This major work of ecological philosophy startles the senses out of habitual ways of perception. For a thousand generations, human beings viewed themselves as part of the wider community of nature, and they carried on active relationships not only with other people with other animals, plants, and natural objects (including mountains, rivers, winds, and weather patters) that we have only lately come to think of as "inanimate." How, then, did humans come to sever their ancient reciprocity with the natural world? What will it take for us to recover a sustaining relation with the breathing earth? In The Spell of the Sensuous David Abram draws on sources as diverse as the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Balinese shamanism, Apache storytelling, and his own experience as an accomplished sleight-of-hand of magician to reveal the subtle dependence of human cognition on the natural environment. He explores the character of perception and excavates the sensual foundations of language, which--even at its most abstract--echoes the calls and cries of the earth. On every page of this lyrical work, Abram weaves his arguments with a passion, a precision, and an intellectual daring that recall such writers as Loren Eisleley, Annie Dillard, and Barry Lopez.