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7 - Neutering Unpopular Politicians

The Neuter Gender and ‘It’ as a Dehumanizing Grammatical Metaphor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 June 2022

By
Natalia Knoblock  and
Yaroslava Sazonova
Edited by
Natalia Knoblock
Natalia Knoblock
Affiliation:
Saginaw Valley State University, Michigan
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Summary

The chapter demonstrates the expressive and evaluative potential of grammatical gender and specifically highlights the ways ‘grammatical neutering’ can be used to belittle and other unpopular politicians. The authors develop the idea that in gendered languages intentional deviations from a grammatical norm are pragmatically loaded and express a notable implicit message. They present a number of examples collected from online Ukrainian-language sources where the neuter pronoun vono (it) was used to refer to two presidents: Putin, the president of the Russian Federation, and Zelensky, the president of Ukraine. Viewing such examples as cases of grammatical metaphor, the authors show that classifying a referent as ‘other’ may be achieved not only by lexical but also by grammatical means. The application of it and neuter morphology where feminine or masculine is expected while expressing disapproval produces a strong pragmatic effect. The addition of grammatical dehumanization and desexualization to derogatory semantic propositions magnifies the utterances’ negative impact and helps to communicate antipathy and dissociation. The chapter discusses the communicative consequences of grammatical metaphorization of the neuter third person pronoun in Ukrainian political discourse, drawing conclusions about pragmatic effects of grammatical gender alternations.

Keywords

grammatical genderneuter gendergrammatical metaphorgrammatical gender alterationdehumanizationdesexualizationpolitical discourseCMC
Type
Chapter
Information
The Grammar of Hate
Morphosyntactic Features of Hateful, Aggressive, and Dehumanizing Discourse
 , pp. 140 - 160
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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