The Personing of Neutral Inclusivity: Tracing the Spread of person Compounds in Occupational Naming

Feminist linguistic reforms provide an example of planned social language change that seeks to ensure inclusivity and equality in the linguistic representation of women and men. Gender-neutralisation has been promoted as the preferred strategy for gender-inclusive representations in English. The strategy has included options such as lexical replacement, e.g., flight attendant instead of hostess; neologisms such as firefighter for fireman and morphological compounding with zero morphs chairØ for chairman and compounds with person. Interestingly, some person compounds have emerged into the gender-inclusive language landscape that were not promoted or supported as part of feminist language planning e.g., waitperson. Our discussion focuses on the gender-neutral morphological compounding evident in a number of occupational nouns. Drawing upon on-line survey data (www.teagirl.arts.uwa.edu.au) we trace the spread and diffusion of person compounds. Our findings reveal that degrees of social-gender loading and occupational prestige interact with positions about gender-inclusivity in confounding ways. Gender-neutralisation through the adoption of person compound