An analysis of the generic masculinity of the world's four major languages resulting in a critical assessment on feminist perspective has won this year's drupa prize.
Every year drupa makes a Euro6000 award to a piece of outstanding academic research at the local Heinrich Heine University, with this year's prize from the world's biggest print show going to the analysis of the Romance languages.
The 300 page work by Dutch native Brigitte Schwarze's is snappily entitled 'Genus im Sprachvergleich. Überlegungen zu Form und Funktion der Genuskategorien im Spanischen, Französischen, Deutschen und Englischen" , which translates as 'A cross-linguistic comparison of grammatical gender. Reflections on form and function in Spanish, French, German and English.'
Schwarze investigates how it is that native speakers of German instinctively know that the word "Hammer" is masculine? Are there any formal indicators for gender, such as the endings a or o in Spanish and Italian? And how does the grammatical gender of nouns affect other parts of speech such as articles, adjectives and pronouns? Also, what is the purpose of grammatical gender distinctions? To answer these and other questions, Brigitte Schwarze carried out a detailed analysis of four European languages. In the process, she clearly distinguished between grammatical gender (Genus) and biological sex (Sexus). At the same time, however, she pointed out how the two are related and offered a critical dissection of feminist discussions of the so-called generic masculine when referring to people.
Beginning in 1978, Messe Düsseldorf, organiser of drupa, has paid tribute to outstanding academic achievement in the humanities at Düsseldorf's Heinrich Heine University with a monetary award of Euro6000 facilitating the publication and distribution of the dissertation. Each year, a specialist jury comprising the dean and associate dean of the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, the drupa President and the President and CEO of Messe Düsseldorf selects the winning dissertation.
