Genus: Personenbezeichnungen

The gender of German nouns for people is a topic which has been discussed since the 1970’s, first of all by the feminist linguists, whose major exponents criticised the use of the generic masculine and promoted the adoption of specific linguistic strategies (e.g. interior capital “I” and double forms) to achieve women’s visibility. The topic is also the object of manuals giving concrete advice about correct gender forms for people (such as neutral forms and collective nouns). However, grammars for learners of German as a foreign language do not offer a systematic description about gender from a grammatical, semantic and social perspective, excluding also the use of addressing forms.