“Language in the Politics of Gender: Reforms and Recontextualizations”
How is language mobilized in political struggles? How does language change as a result? This paper compares the U.S. reform of pronoun use (generic he) demanded by second wave feminist activists in the 1960s–70s and reforms of pronoun use proposed and debated by U.S. trans activists in the last few decades. It juxtaposes these with language reforms in Hungary, showing how the kind of reform, the political control of activism, and the structure of the languages involved constraints and organizes the political outcome of language change, intentional or not.
Susan Gal is Mae and Sidney G. Metzl Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago in the Departments of Anthropology and Linguistics. Her work addresses the political economy of language, language ideologies, and standardization. She has also worked on the politics of reproduction and gendered language, translation, and most recently the semiotic processes that mediate the discourses of the European far-right.
Gal is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the recipient of Guggenheim, ACLS and SSRC Fellowships. She is the co-author of Signs of Difference: Language and Ideology in Social Life, co-author of The Politics of Gender after Socialism, author of Language Shift, and co-editor of the volume Languages and Publics: The Making of Authority. A collection of her articles has appeared in Hungarian translation; many are available in German, Russian, French, and Romanian.
Please reach out to Hazel Velasco Palacios hgv5008@psu.edu if you have any questions about the event or need accommodations.


Occurrences
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Wednesday, April 2, 2025, 9:00 a.m.–10:00 a.m.