Linguistic Gender is Related to Psychological Gender: The Case of Chinese Characters

• Main Authors: TONG, Yuk-Yue, CHIU, Chi-Yue, FU, Ho-Ying
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2001
• Subjects: Asian Studies; Multicultural Psychology; Social Psychology
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/281; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/1280/viewcontent/Tong_etal__Linguistic_Gender__2001.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Past research (Ervin, 1972; Konishi, 1993) suggests that a noun's linguistic gender is not just an arbitrary, semantically-empty linguistic category. Rather it may connote masculine or feminine properties, and thus can subtly influence responses to the noun and its referent. The present study extended this research by exploring how gendered radicals of nonsense Chinese characters might affect the characters' connotations. The results showed that when an unfamiliar Chinese character is encountered, meaning interpretation can be affected by the meaning of the radicals. Moreover, since gendered Chinese radicals are linked to share representations of psychological gender, such as representation may then affect the character's connotations.