Gender-Neutral Designation of a Person in the German Language
The article is devoted to identifying the main means of achieving gender correctness in the modern German language. The review of the basic theoretical works concerning gender in language is carried out, the approaches to the problem of gender in linguistics are analyzed, and the main directions of gender research in the linguistics of language are characterized. The article considers the concept of "common masculine gender" in the modern German language. Analyzing the works of many scientists, it was found that women are discriminated against in the language. Linguists insist that the general masculine gender (generisches Maskulinum) should be avoided, as this makes women invisible. The study found that gender correctness in modern German is achieved by avoiding the use of the common masculine gender through visualization and neutralization. The "visualization" strategy always clearly indicates the biological gender. To embody both types of correctness, modern German speech has a wide choice of language means (suffixes -in/-innen using slashes or arcs, double naming of both forms, internal-I, gender-gep and gender star). An alternative to the use of common masculine nouns is also suggested to use neutral words that avoid any reference to the biological gender of the respondents. An important objection to the gender-fair part of language is that texts written on their principles are often harder to understand than texts that use the common masculine gender. The prospects for further research lie in the comparative study of the means of achieving gender correctness in the German language