‘That’s unscientific!’ Science as the arbitrator of ‘truth’ in (German) feminist linguistic debates

Abstract

The feminist critique of language has been contested from its very inception. Opponents have distanced themselves from feminist proposals by arguing, for example, that language and reality are separate entities; that linguistic disparity is insignificant in comparison to other forms of discrimination; and most of all, that feminist approaches are ‘unscientific’. In this paper, I explore the late 1970s dispute between Senta Trömel-Plötz, Hartwig Kalverkämper and Luise F. Pusch as a particular example of the feminist vs. ‘scientific’ position. These three linguists are prominent voices in the German-language context and their arguments provide a valuable insight into the nature of gender and language debates in general. As I aim to show in the following, even empirical evidence does not necessarily bring a close to the discussions.

 

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Keywords

Pusch, Trömel-Plötz, gender, German, feminist linguistics

How to Cite

Luck, C., (2015) “‘That’s unscientific!’ Science as the arbitrator of ‘truth’ in (German) feminist linguistic debates”, Tropos 2(1).

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Authors

Christiane Luck (UCL)

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