Gender-indexing phoric elements in idioms : peeping into oxford advanced learner’s dictionary third edition

Francis Ngoyi Créqui Tshimanga

  1. Institut Supérieur Pédagogique de Mbujimayi, DR Congo

  Open Access - Under a Creative Commons license

Abstract

Although some elements of idioms are more or less fixed, phoric elements seem to be the most flexible since they are interpretable only with consideration of their coreferential antecedents whose features they mirror. Among the most mirrored features, mention can be made of grammatical gender and number. Given that grammatical gender in English highly overlaps with social gender and sex, the present paper tries to look at the use of phoric elements which are coreferential with gender-indexing antecedents in idioms with a view to finding out whether or not they account for gender- inclusivity; and to determine which degendering strategy they satisfy. Accordingly, the paper selectively draws on CDA (Fairclough 2003; Lazar 2005) and on Chomsky’s (1988) Binding Theory (Cook 1988) in a mixed research perspective.


Keywords : Phoric elements, dictionary, idioms, gender- indexing, critical language awareness.


1. Introduction

Gender-inclusive expectations have recently effected multifarious changes in both lexicon and grammatical structure of the English language. In the latter case, the masculine pronoun “he,” in particular, and other masculine phoric elements which were formerly considered as generic, have been replaced by various other forms which are thought to be gender-neutral. In fact, the nature of these elements being to mirror their antecedent, whenever they are use exophorically, anaphorically or cataphorically as coreferential with gender-inclusive antecedents, these phoric elements are also expected to be gender-inclusive. This will help the speaker or writer using them to avoid being biased against people of one sex. That is why Crystal & Davy (1969: 5) rightly argues: “How often do we speak or write without knowing that what we are doing is causing bad impression on other people, because of our poor command or inadequate social awareness of our language?”

Although idioms are said to be more or less fixed expressions, some of their elements do vary to some extent. And a case in point of such variable elements is that of phoric elements which must agree with their antecedents. In this framework, the paper tries to examine the behaviour of gender-
referring phoric elements; that is those phoric elements which are
coreferential with gender-indexing antecedents with a view to finding out whether or not they comply with gender-inclusive expectations and to what extent. Given that many attempts of proposals have been put forth, the dictionary is a depository in which all these forms are to be found.

Sated differently, the choice of such items from Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (OALD3, henceforward) stems from the fact that dictionaries are regarded as authorities for settling any usage problem (Mills 1995), in general, and gender- sensitive usage problems, in particular. In fact, users’ resorting to the dictionary is justified on at least two grounds: (1) the dictionary is expected to adapt to the various needs which society expects it to satisfy; and (2) it has come to be looked on as a legislative organ, to which one turns for standard of “good” as opposed to “bad” usage (Leech 1976: 203-4). However, even if they considered as absolutes, dictionaries have been equally criticized for perpetuating a patriarchal view point (Mills 1995:123). The other side of the coin is that that dictionaries may also work the other way round, in helping to implement emerging linguistic and/or non-linguistic worldviews.

2. Methodology

As to data collection, this paper is basically a documentary or desk research drawing on idioms collected thanks to the skim- reading of OALD3. The overall corpus generated 37 idioms (see the appendixes) selected on the basis of their gender-indexing potential. That is, for an idiom to be included in the corpus, it had to contain a gender-referring phoric element. Besides, some other idioms comprising the indefinite pronoun “somebody” or “one” had also been included in the corpus in order to study their related phoric elements in the definien. Finally, the sampling in illustrations is purposefully and randomly selected.

Phoric elements are part of grammatical or structural words. As such, they underlie structural or grammatical gender- indexing. To better capture this issue, the paper will selectively draw on draws on CDA (Fairclough 2003; Lazar 2005), and on Chomsky’s (1988) Binding Theory (Cook 1988) in a mixed research perspective (Ahuja 2001; Dörnyei 2007). Chomsky’s Binding Theory (Cook 1988) in order to capture the reference relationships between antecedents and their phoric elements (i.e. anaphors and cataphors). Similarly, CDA will, on the one hand, make it possible to point out how reality is stereotypically perceived, constructed, reproduced and conceptualized in this language in terms of gender and possible related biases. On the other hand, CDA will help to show that (1) linguistic choices made in the dictionaries under study are ideologically constructed and (2) contribute to the production and reproduction of gender ideology (see Lazar 2005). The other side of the coin is that, in line with gender awareness, linguistic choices may also contribute to the levelling of linguistically-constructed gender bias. All these methods are considered from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives. These will help (1) in grouping different phoric elements and (2) in pointing out their distribution and frequency of occurrence, and (3) show whether or not they gender-biased and why.

3. On linguistic gender-indexing and phoric elements

Linguistic gender-indexing is all about various ways linguistic resources represent the sexes or masculinity and feminity at large (Christie 2010: 171). This linguistic representation may be said sexist or non-sexist depending on whether it is gender-inclusive or gender-biased. That is, it is said to be sexist when it constitutes a gender-based discrimination of one kind or another. Such sexism may be of various kinds depending on the level of analysis considered. Accordingly, outlining the first broad area of inquiry in sexual linguistic which examines the relationship between the English language structure and the sexes, Hebert & Nykiel-Herbert (1986: 48) argue that “[m]ost of the interest in this realm has centered around topics such as the generic use of ‘he’ and ‘man’, address term systems, professional titles, etc.” However, in her book Feminist Stylistics, Mills (1995) analyses sexism in language at three levels viz. (1) word level, (2) phrase or sentence level, (3) and discourse level. The present study is concerned with sentence level or structural sexism.

Also known as grammatical sexism, structural sexism is that kind of sexist gender-encoding which is made explicit through the phrase structure or syntax. That is why it is also known as structural or grammatical sexism. To quote Mills (1995: 128), [w]e concentrate on words in isolation, it can sometimes appear that we have a particular view of meaning, i.e. that meaning is located within that word…some words do indeed have a history of usage which leads the hearer to interpret them in particular ways; however, words make sense only in relation to their context…

In fact, the present study restricts to gender-indexing in phoric elements in order to point out whether they are sexist or non- sexist. Phoric elements are also many and diversified; but those concerned with gender-indexing are mainly central pronouns of the third person singular (Halliday & Hasan 1976). These phoric elements bear or reflect the gender-marking of the head noun of the phrase they deputize for. It is on this ground that Quirk et al. (1985: 314) argue that “[s]ome 3rd person pronouns and wh-pronouns do…express natural gender distinction.” Furthermore, in their discussion of gender distinction in central pronouns in English, Quirk et al. (1985: 341) observe that “[g]ender distinctions are largely restricted to 3rd person singular pronouns of the categories of personal, possessive, and reflexive pronouns.” These are illustrated in the table below.

Erreur de chargment du tableau de la distinction du genre par les pronons

As can be observed from the above table, grammarians, for example, Quirk et al. (1972 & 1985), Thomson & Martinet (1980), to mention but these, define the pronoun “he” as masculine, that is, it refers to men and male animals. However, it is used as a generic, gender-indefinite or unmarked pronoun to refer to both males and females simultaneously. To quote O’Grady et al. (1993: 434)

Talking about men and women, the most obvious way in which sex differences with respect to a referent are manifested in English is through grammatical gender. The use of English pronouns is instructive in this regard. We do not employ he, for instance, to refer only to males. In Standard English, it is used as a generic third person singular pronoun when the sex of the referent is unknown or irrelevant. Thus, we occasionally still hear sentences such as Did everyone turnin his assignment today? even if the entire group of referents consists of women.

In the same way, Mills (1995: 87) defines generic forms as “those elements in language which perpetuate a view of male as a norm or universal and the female as deviant or individual”. This being the case, the use of generic masculine may be said to be sexist or gender-biased. Such kind of sexism also known as grammatical sexism (Musau 1995; Mulamba & Tshimanga 2006) is made overt through a syntactic and/or semantic relation known as reference. The latter is an interpretive relation whereby two elements, the presupposing and the presupposed are integrated into a text.

According to Halliday & Hasan (1976) reference is to be understood as a cohesive device which includes exophora or situational reference and endophora or textual reference. The latter category is in turn divided into anaphora (backward reference) and cataphora (forward reference) (Halliday & Hasan 1976). These subtypes of reference are also respectively called “unmarked-order anaphora” and “marked-order anaphora” (Huddleston 1984) or “syntactically-controlled anaphora” and “pragmatically-controlled anaphora” (Sag cited in Huddleston 1984).

Apart from the above view, Huang (2010: 9) notes that in contemporary linguistics, the “anaphora,” “anaphor” or “anaphoric” has three distinct senses. In its first sense, this term “can be used to refer to a relation between two or more linguistic elements, in which the interpretation of one element (called an anaphor or anaphoric expression) is in some way determined by the interpretation of another element (called an antecedent).” And, the “linguistic elements that can be employed to encode an anaphoric relation in this general sense range from phonetically unrealized gaps/zero anaphora/empty categories through pronouns and reflexives to various reference-tracking systems like gender/class, switch-function, and switch-reference.”

The second sense of the term is the one used by Chomsky’s “generative syntax for reference to a NP which has the features [+anaphor, -pronominal] versus pronominal as a NP with the features [-anaphor, +pronominal].” Finally, in the third sense, the term can be used to refer to an anaphoric expression whose antecedent comes earlier as opposed to “cataphora/cataphor/cataphoric,” whereby the antecedent comes later. In fact, this latter sense is related to the first which is its superordinate. To avoid this confusion, I will be using the term “anaphora” in Huang’s (2010) sense (3) (i.e. anaphora vs. cataphora), and the term “phoric element” for the superordinate or as synonymous to “anaphora” in Huang’s (2010) sense (1).

Besides, Huang (2010: 9) shows that “anaphora can be (intra) sentential, in which case the anaphoric expression and its antecedent occur within a single simplex or complex sentence. It can also be discoursal, in which case the anaphoric expression and its antecedent cross sentence boundaries.” In terms of syntactic category, Huang (2010: 9) distinguishes between (1) NP-anaphora and (2) VP-anaphora. In fact, Halliday & Hasan (1976) use the general term “reference,” which is wider in scope and subsumes endophoric vs. exophoric reference, but also personal, demonstrative and comparative reference.

It is in the first type (i.e. personal reference) which is realized through the use of personal pronouns, i.e. the traditional personal pronouns, possessives and reflexives that sexism is displayed. Here, a masculine item denoting the “other roles” i.e. third person singular, is used as coreferential with nouns of the personal dual class, the pronouns “everyone,” “everybody,” “someone,” “somebody,” “one,” together with their alternatives and possible combinations, to mention but these (Mulamba & Tshimanga 2006). Such a use of the pronoun “he” or its related forms as foric (i.e. point back or forward) (Halliday & Hasan 1976) to dual nouns and pronouns which are not necessarily masculine is and has been considered as a case of prevailing sexism in the English language. To quote Mills (1995: 87)

The generic ‘he’ is perhaps the most well-known example of gender specific or sexist language, and is frequently referred to as ‘he-man’language. An example of a generic pronoun is: ‘When an author has completed his manuscript, he can send it to the publishers.’ The traditional argument is that ‘his’ and ‘he’ are used here not sex-specifically, but generically; that is, although the pronouns refer grammatically to the singular male author, they should be taken to refer to both male and female authors in general.

In fact, as Mills (1995: 88) observes, different researchers have shown that generic pronouns are often understood as referring to male. For example, students who were asked to complete fragmentary stories which contained the generic pronoun “he,” in most cases, completed the stories using “he” as a sex-specific pronoun or a male named character. In addition, she paraphrases Robertson’s research on visualization and generic pronouns which supports that people tend to visualize male participants when the supposed generic pronoun “he” is used.

Furthermore, some people consider generic pronoun use confusing to the extent that one cannot know with precision whether, in a given context, whether a pronoun is used generically or gender-specifically. In this framework, Mills (1995: 88), paraphrasing Mackay, writes, the so-called generic ‘he’ is confusing for the reader, since, in some instances, it is not clear whether the reference is truly generic or in fact gender-specific; for example, ‘The more education an individual attains, the better his occupation is likely to be.’ Mackay asserts that, in this example, it is impossible to be sure whether the nouns and pronouns are being used generically, that is, that this is true of all individuals or gender specifically, that is, that this is true only of male individuals. Thus the so-called generic use may in fact confuse rather than clarify.

Another issue worth discussing is gender-free language in line with phoric elements. The term “gender-free language” is used as synonymous with the terms “gender-neutral language,” “non- sexist language,” “gender-fair language,” “anti-sexist language,” “sexism-free language,” “gender-inclusive language,” to mention but a few. Non-sexist language can be viewed in terms of contestation of sexist usage and consists of proposed alternatives (Sunderland 2006). Differently stated, gender-free language is the opposite of sexist language. Mills (1995: 95) views it as a kind of language which demonstrates an acceptance of the validity of both men’s and women’s experiences and contributions when she states: “Gender-free or anti-sexist language is a conscious choice by the speakers to assure readers and listeners that they do not view the world as the male domain that it may appear to be.”

It is to be accounted for by both speakers and writers if ever they are to avoid discriminating people of a given sex. In fact, non- sexist or gender-free language is just one aspect of the superordinate term “politically correct language” (Ferguson 2004: 38), which refers to any kind of language which is bias-free in that it does not discriminate against people irrespective of their race, class, sex, creed, age, sexuality, status, to mention but these.

A yearning for the use of gender-neutral language has motivated the use of different strategies to wipe out sexism from language. This section concerns itself with adumbrating some of the various solutions or proposals put forward towipe out gender-based bias in the English language. In Sunderland’s word’s (2006: 11):

An early assumption surrounding “sexist language” items was that language could influence both thought and behaviour. Sexist language was seen to do so for the worse. This analysis led to the adoption or creation of alternative linguistic items – for example, “Ms” as a title for all women, married or single; “manager,” “spokesperson” and “chairperson” to refer inclusively to both women and men; “he or she” and “s/he” to avoid the “masculine bias” of the generic “he.”

Such alternatives were used not only by committed individuals in their speech and writing and documented in feminist book, but also by different corporate bodies. Similarly, these new syntactic possibilities, new lexicalizations and re-presentations of familiar ones have also appeared in grammars and dictionaries (Sunderland 2006). In the following lines, I will discuss the most common of them with reference to the kind of sexism they intend to level.

To level sexism in the use of generics, that is explicitly masculine pronouns and nouns to refer to both males, various strategies have been suggested. For generic pronouns, Mills (1995) suggests in turn (1) the use of plural pronouns, which implies pluralisation of the whole clause, (2) the use of conjoined forms “s/he,” “he or she,” “she or he,” (3) passivization, (4) the use of the female pronoun as generic since “she” can be seen to contain “he,” (5) the use of the male pronoun as generic with a proviso, (6) the use of alternate pronouns, which consists in using “she” and “he” in turn; for example, “she” for the first occurrence of the pronoun and “he” for the next, and so on; and (7) the use of singular “they” (see O’Grady et al. 1993; Quirk et al. 1985; Swan 1984). Commenting on the latter case, Swan (1984: 236) writes,

Anybody, anyone, somebody, someone, nobody, no-one, everybody and everyone are used with singular verbs. “…we often use they, them and their to refer to these words, especially in an informal style.”… If anybody calls, tell them I’m out, but take their name and address… They, them and their are not plural in sentences like these. They mean ‘he or she’, ‘him or her’.

Likewise, O’Grady et al. (1993: 434) add that, …we more often hear utterances such as the following: No one can with impunity take the law into their own hands (…) and Why don’t we go to our first caller and see what their concerns are? (…). In these sentences, we have instances of singular (gender-indefinite) they, which is widespread in colloquial English and which denotes an indefinite individual of unspecified gender. For speakers who utter sentences of this sort, the pronouns she and he are reserved for reference to individuals whose gender is known.

The case in which the indefinite one occurs as antecedent, sexism can be avoided in adopting the British English usage which consists in repeating “one” as foric to “one” in every configuration, for example “One got hurt when one fell off one’s horse” (Quirk et al. 1972); as Halliday & Hasan (1976: 46) supports that “there is a generalized personal form with human referent, one.” Besides, the zest to wipe out sexism based on generic “he” has led some researchers to coin “unisex pronouns” SE (he/she), SEM (him/her), SES (his/her/hers), and SEMSELF (himself/herself) (Abdel-Nabi & Hilfi, quoted in Musau 1995).

In actual fact, such an attempt is one of the response strategies to the problem generated by the absence of a true sex- neutral 3rd person singular pronoun in English (Herbert & Nykiel-Herbert 1986: 52). Accordingly, they argue “Specific proposals for new pronouns abound, e.g. co, tey, hesh, thon, xe, E, po.” Such a coinage might have been carried out on the basis of some diachronic or synchronic linguistic justification. For example, Miller & Swift (1977) (cited by Herbert & Nykiel- Herbert 1986: 52) argue that “such coinages are not new: thon, for example derives from that one and was first recorded in 1859 and has been listed in many standard reference works.”

In sum, apart from the alternative use of the masculine and feminine in the same text, clear-cut proposals regarding gender- inclusive pronouns or epicenes, as well as their masculine, feminine, and their nonpersonal counterparts can be tabulated as below:

Gender distinction

There is a need to make some observations about this table. First, pronouns in (1) are explicitly masculine. However, they illustrate the proposal according to which the masculine may be used as generic with a proviso. Similarly, although explicitly feminine, (2) illustrates the proposal supporting the use of the feminine as generic while (3) illustrates the joint use of the masculine and feminine as epicene. Option (4) illustrate the use of the singular “they” while options (5) and (6) are all about completely invented forms. The second observation is that while forms in (1) to (4) are actually used in everyday discourse, those in (5) and (6) are still but mere suggestions.

Third, forms in (1) to (5) have a complete distribution across different types of central pronouns: personal, possessive, and reflexive. To paraphrase Quirk et al. (1985) these pronouns are called central pronouns because they share the features which are particularly characteristic of pronouns, viz. contrast of person, gender, and subjective/objective case. Furthermore, “[a]lthough these central pronouns fulfil different syntactic functions, they have obvious morphological resemblances.” The latter reason justifies the inclusion in the above table of the possessive “her,” for example-which is determinative in function and consequently cannot function alone as a surrogate to a noun (Quirk et al. 1985: 345-6).

4. Phoric gender-indexing in OALD3

Phoric gender-indexing is or grammatical gender-indexing is made manifest through one of the cohesive relations known as reference. As already announced in the methodological section in the general introduction, I will selectively draw on Chomsky’s (1988) Binding Theory (Cook 1988) in order to capture the relationship between different phoric elements and their antecedents. According to Cook (1988: 43), “Binding Theory deals with whether expressions in the sentence may refer to the same entities as other expressions.” That is, this theory is all about – among other things-how pronouns relate to their antecedents. In Chomsky’s (1988: 52) own words, Binding Theory “is concerned with connections among noun phrases that have to do with such semantic properties as dependence of reference, including the connection between a pronoun and its antecedent” (Chomsky 1988: 52 cited by Cook 1988: 43).

As to Chomsky (1982a: 6), “The theory of binding is concerned with the relations, if any, of anaphors and pronominals to their antecedents” (Chomsky 1982a: 6 cited by Cook 1988: 49). It is based on three principles known as Binding Principles running as follows: (1) A: An anaphor is bound in a local domain; (2) B: A pronominal is free in its local domain; and (3) C: A referring expression is free. In the same vein, reference – as already pointed out earlier – is the relations whereby two terms an antecedent and its phoric elements are coreferential such that the interpretation of the latter is dependent on the former. Note that I use the term phoric element as an umbrella term subsuming Chomsky’s notions of pronominals and anaphors.

Besides, reference may be endophoric in which case both the antecedent and its phoric element co-occur in the same text; or exophoric or situational when the phoric element itself is present in the text. Endophoric reference may be further subcategorized into (1) anaphoric reference also known as unmarked order reference or backward reference and (2) cataphoric reference or marked order reference also called forward reference. Reference cannot be sexist or non-sexist per se. However, these indexes become relevant when they reflect gender-related ideology, especially in the use of central pronouns as phoric elements. Finally, to show that the phoric element and its antecedent corefer, they will be assigned the same index or co-indexed (see Cook 1988: 43-4).

To study phoric gender-indexing in idioms, I will group the latter into gender-indexing in the definiendum and gender- indexing in the definien.

4.1. Phoric gender-indexing in the definiendum

A critical look cast at the definiendums or forms of the idioms reveals that gender-indexing is carried out both exophorically and endophorically.

4.1.1. Exophoric gender-indexing

The category of exophoric gender-indexing distinguishes both gender-neutral and gender-biased indexing. Exophoric gender-neutral indexing is realized through the possessive indefinite “one” used exophorically. By contrast, gender-biased exophoric indexing is realized through the use of masculine forms of central pronouns as generic where a gender neutral form is expected. Here are some instances:

Erreur de chargement de l'indexation exophoric du genre

Instances (1) and (2) use exophoric neutral gender-indexing realized through the presence of the possessive form of the indefinite “one.” Therefore, these idioms are considered as gender-inclusive at least as far as their definiendum or formal or lexical part is concerned because the indefinite “one” itself is gender-inclusive. By contrast, examples (2) to (7) are illustrations of exophoric gender-biased reference since the subjective personal pronoun “he” in instances (2) and (5), the attributive possessive “his” in (3) and (7) and the objective personal pronoun “him” in (6) are explicitly masculine yet their respective antecedents are not necessarily masculine. Since, they are generic masculine forms intended as gender-inclusive, they may be said to perpetuate the subordination and invisibility of women often scrutinized in the literature.

4.1.2. Endophoric gender-indexing

Apart from the exophoric gender-indexing just discussed, there are also cases of endophoric gender-indexing in the definiendums of the idioms. Two further cases need then to be distinguished: (1) cases where the antecedent is a noun phrase whose head in the noun “man” or “person” and (2) those in which the antecedent is the indefinite pronoun “somebody.” Below are some instances of such idioms. To show coreferentiality between the antecedent and its corresponding anaphor, both will be co- indexed; that is, the same letter will be used in subscript as co- index in both antecedent and anaphor.

Erreur de chargement de l'image illustrant l'indexation endophorique du genre

Examples (8) and (9) illustrate cases of generic masculine phoric forms coreferential with the term “man” used as generic. Put simply, in (8), the attributive possessive anaphor is coreferential with the noun phrase “a man” while the reflexive non-emphatic anaphor “himself” in (9) is coreferential with the noun phrase “every man.” In the same way, in (10) “his” is considered as generic and is co-indexed with the noun phrase “a person.” Finally, in examples (11) to (13) equally comprise different generic masculine anaphors which are coreferential with the indefinite pronoun “somebody.”

Erreur de chargment de la table illustrant l'indexation phorique du genre

This table present in a quantitative form the frequency of phoric forms in the idioms in both exophoric and endophoric reference. It shows that there were in whole 24 idioms in the corpus which were concerned with gender-indexing in the definiendums. Among the 24 idioms considered, 10 (i.e. 41.7%) were concerned with exophoric reference and 14 (i.e. 58.3%) with endophoric reference. Regarding exophoric-gender indexing, 4 idioms out of10 (i.e. 40 %) are gender-neutral since they used the indefinite “one” exophorically to refer to both men and women.

By contrast, 6 idioms out of 10 (i.e. 60 %) are gender-biased as they used the masculine pronoun as generic. As to endophoric gender-indexing in the definiendums of idioms 14 out of the 14 idioms (i.e. 100 %) used the masculine “he.” The latter is used as anaphoric to noun phrases comprising the “man” or “person” or to the indefinite pronoun “somebody” as antecedents to the proportion of 4 (i.e. 28.6%), 1 (i.e. 7.1%), and 9 (i.e. 64.3%) out of 14. Therefore, such a use is also sexist insofar as it is meant to be gender-inclusive. In all, out of the total of 24 phoric elements used in the definiendums of gender-referring idioms, there were just 4 (i.e. 16.7%) occurrences of gender-inclusive phoric elements versus 20 (i.e. 83.3%) occurrences of the masculine phoric elements. To conclude, it is worth noting that in this table “he” is used as prototypical of all the masculine forms of masculine phoric elements belonging to the subclass of central pronouns.

Distribution des éléments phoriques dans les définitions du OALD3

4.2. Phoric gender-indexing in idiom definiens

Contrary to the preceding subsection section which was concerned with looking at how gender was encoded through phoric elements in the definiendums or the formal part of idioms, the present subsection is devoted to the discussion of gender- encoding in the semantic part of the idioms or the definiens. Similarly to the above subsection, gender-indexing in the present one is also realized through the cohesive relation of reference. However, contrary to reference in the preceding subsection which is part and parcel of the structure of idioms, reference in this subsection is to be considered as part of the defining vocabulary of the idioms under consideration. Therefore, the aim is to find out whether the OALD3 uses gender-neutral or gender- biased phoric elements in its defining vocabulary, taking the particular example of idioms.

A gender-based typology of phoric forms in idioms definiens in the OALD3 also reveals two major categories viz. exophoric gender-referring anaphors and endophoric ones. The former category is so called because the antecedent is not present in the co-text. It is made up essentially of the generic masculine anaphor “he.” As to the category of endophoric gender-indexing anaphors, it is may be broken down further into (1) anaphoric indefinite “one,” (2) anaphoric feminine “she” coreferential with a noun phrase having the noun “woman” as head, (4) the masculine “he” anaphoric to a noun phrase having the noun “man” as head, (5) the masculine “he” anaphoric to a noun phrase whose head is the noun “person,” and (6) the masculine “he” anaphoric to the indefinite pronoun “somebody.” All these categories and subcategories are illustrated in instances (92) to (97) below.

Indexation phorique de genre dans les définitions d'idiomes

The generic masculine “he” in (14) and the reflexive indefinite form “oneself” in (15) are used exophorically. By contrast, the feminine phoric form “her” in (16) is used anaphorically as it refers to the noun phrase “an honest woman” mentioned in the co-text. That is why they bear the same index in subscript. Furthermore, the objective anaphor “him” in (17) is coreferential with “a man” while him in (18) is anaphoric to the noun phrase “a person.” Finally, the attributive phoric element “his” in (19) is coreferential with “somebody.”

table d'Indexation phorique de genre dans les définiendums d'idiomes

This table presents the frequency and different configurations of gender-referring phoric elements in the definiens of idioms in the OALD3. In whole, there were 29 occurrences of such phoric elements 3 (i.e. 10.4%) of which fall in the category of exophoric reference and 26 (i.e. 89.7%) in that of endophoric reference. As can be read from the above table, all the 3 cases of exophoric reference use the subjective masculine personal pronoun. On the other hand, the 26 cases of endophoric reference are distributed along the following proportions: (1) 6 cases (i.e. 20.7%) of gender-neutral anaphoric “one,” (2) 4 cases (i.e. 13.8%) of generic masculine anaphor “he,” (3) 3 cases (i.e. 10.4%) of specific feminine anaphor “she,” (4) 4 cases (i.e. 13.8%) of generic masculine anaphor “he” coreferential with a noun phrase having the gender-neutral noun “person” as head, and (5) 9 cases (i.e. 31.0%) of generic masculine anaphor “he” coreferential with the indefinite pronoun “somebody.”

Graphique de Distribution des éléments phoriques dans les définiendums d'idiomes dans le OALD3

5. Discussions and conclusion

The present paper set out to investigate into phoric gender- indexing elements used in idioms in OALD3 with a view to finding out whether or not and to what extent they reflect gender- inclusive expectations. This stemmed from the fact that gender- inclusive expectations have recently effected multifarious changes in both lexicon and grammatical structure of the English language. This necessitates the replacement of generic masculine phoric elements by gender-neutral ones when they stand in coreferential relationship with epicene antecedents. The reason behind this was that the nature of these elements being to mirror their antecedent, whenever they are use exophorically, anaphorically or cataphorically as coreferential with gender- inclusive antecedents, these phoric elements are also expected to be gender-inclusive.

Given that these elements are the most flexible in idioms, the dictionaries which are regarded as authorities for settling any usage problem are the ideal depository which may adequately help in implementing emerging usage trends.

Accordingly, the paper has attempted to look at the issue of phoric gender-indexing from a twofold perspective: (1) in the definiendum or formal part of the idiom and (2) in the definien or semantic part of the idioms. In the first case, gender-indexing has been addressed both endophorically and exophorically. The findings show that 41.7% of gender-indexing elements were concerned with exophoric reference while 58.3% with endophoric reference. In the first situation exophoric-gender indexing was gender-inclusive at 40% as it made use of indefinite “one” to refer to both the masculine and the feminine. By contrast the remaining 60 % of phoric elements were gender- biased as they used the masculine pronoun as generic. Regarding endophoric gender-indexing in the definiendums the generic masculine “he” was used at 100%. Its context of use subsumes anaphoric reference to noun phrases comprising the “man” or “person” or to the indefinite pronoun “somebody” as antecedents. Such a use is also sexist insofar as it is meant to be gender- inclusive despite its being overtly masculine. Besides, “he” is used as prototypical of all the masculine forms of masculine phoric elements belonging to the subclass of central pronouns.

As to the frequency and different configurations of gender- referring phoric elements in the definiens of idioms in the OALD3, 10.4% of phoric elements fell into the category of exophoric reference and 89.7% in that of endophoric reference. In the first case, exophoric reference uses the subjective masculine personal pronoun as generic, and is gender-biased for that matter. On the other hand, endophoric reference is distributed between (1) gender-neutral anaphoric “one” (i20.7%), (2) generic masculine anaphor “he” (i 13.8%), (3) specific feminine anaphor “she” (10.4%), (4) generic masculine anaphor “he” coreferential with a noun phrase having the gender-neutral noun “person” as head (13.8%), and (5) of generic masculine anaphor “he” coreferential with the indefinite pronoun “somebody” ( 31.0%).

As these results stand, it becomes clear to argue that the generic masculine is still widely used. Consequently, phoric gender-indexing is gender-biased the most part. However, some of the cases of gender-neutral indexing in phoric elements are restricted to the use of the indefinite “one.” The other proposal put forward for the degendering of phoric elements are completely absent from the idioms in this dictionary. This is sufficient proof to argue that, instead of helping in implementing emerging gender-inclusive expectations, OALD3 has worked in the keeping of the status quo. Therefore, it helps as an ideology state apparatus perpetuating a gender-biased world view.

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Appendix

Gender-Referring Idioms

The corpus below comprises gender-referring idioms involving man, woman, person as well as other gender-referring nouns and pronouns, comprised in OALD3.

Idiomes Référant au Genre
Idiomes Référant au Genre1


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