„Everyone’s a hän.“: Über das Personalpronomen der dritten Person Singular im Kontext gendersensiblen Sprachgebrauchs

The study analyses how the personal pronoun of the third person singular (3PPS) is discussed in the context of gender-sensitive language use in Finland and Germany. The two languages have very different prerequisites: While gender plays a central role in the grammar of German and the 3PPS is also gender-specific (for personal reference: fem.: sie, masc.: er), Finnish is a genderless language with one 3PPS (hän). A corpus of articles from two large national daily newspapers was analysed – Helsingin Sanomat (HS) for Finland and taz for Germany. The articles were analysed with regard to their writer, text type, their references to earlier texts, their arguments for or against a gender-neutral or gendered 3PPS, and underlying assumptions. The results show fundamental differences in the understanding of gender: in the Finnish debate, gender is predominantly conceptualised in binary terms, whereas in the German discussion, a spectrum is more frequently assumed. This difference appears to be due less to social majority opinions than to the perspectives of the respective authors. In both countries, there are overlaps in the goal of non-discriminatory language use, but the arguments are contextualised differently: In Finland, embedding in equality and language purity debates dominates, while in Germany, uncertainties in linguistic usage are prominent. Finally, there are also differences between lay and professional language users, particularly in the type and depth of argumentation. While laypeople mainly express opinions and personal experiences, the discussions between linguists are solution-orientated.