Feministische Linguistik in Frankreich: Zu einigen Eigenheiten französischer Forschung zu Sprache und Geschlecht

This paper aims at describing some peculiarities of the field of linguistics that focuses problems of language and gender. Research in this field started from the feminist critique of language in the context of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the 1970s. In French, different to English or German, the notion of feminist linguistics (*linguistique féministe) does not exist. This contribution outlines the main points of feminist analysis and critique of the French language based on exemplary texts by Anne-Marie Houdebine and Marina Yaguello. Special attention is paid to language usage and especially to the denotation gender (or sex). It will be shown that feminist critique of French is less radical as, for example, feminist critique of German but had anyway effects on the French language communit