Fabienne Baider
2004
Baider, Fabienne; Chevillot, Frederique
The French Feminine by Edwige Khaznadar Journal Article
In: Women in French Studies, 12 (1), pp. 134-136 , 2004.
@article{Baider2004bb,
title = {The French Feminine by Edwige Khaznadar},
author = {Fabienne Baider and Frederique Chevillot
},
doi = {10.1353 / wfs.2004.0019},
year = {2004},
date = {2004-01-01},
journal = {Women in French Studies},
volume = {12},
number = {1},
pages = {134-136 },
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2003
Baider, Fabienne
Pleasure of speech, speech on pleasure in the Heptameron by Marguerite de Navarre Journal Article
In: Women in French Studies 11 (1): DOI: , 11 (1), pp. 11-24, 2003.
@article{Baider2003,
title = {Pleasure of speech, speech on pleasure in the Heptameron by Marguerite de Navarre},
author = {Fabienne Baider},
doi = {10.1353 / wfs.2003.0001},
year = {2003},
date = {2003-01-01},
journal = {Women in French Studies 11 (1): DOI: },
volume = {11},
number = {1},
pages = {11-24},
abstract = {This article proposes to rethink the Heptameron as a critique of the roles assigned to both sexes, and in particular as a questioning of the discursive and sexual passivity required of the female being. In fact, on several occasions, the author encourages the change of the rules of the communication code and, in doing so, succeeds in reversing the traditional social and sexual roles: the woman then escapes her position of receiver / receptacle to assert herself by as a speaker and actor. It is in this defense of daring women that the originality of the Heptameron lies in part. The most controversial heroines indeed go further than the simple reversal of the polarities of the sexual roles. Marguerite de Navarre's project is therefore not "to overturn the order of things", aware that in this case “history would ultimately come back to the same thing” (Irigaray 32). She goes further and rejects the traditional dichotomy of the sign, thereby inventing an agency for which the female / male binary no longer makes sense.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
This article proposes to rethink the Heptameron as a critique of the roles assigned to both sexes, and in particular as a questioning of the discursive and sexual passivity required of the female being. In fact, on several occasions, the author encourages the change of the rules of the communication code and, in doing so, succeeds in reversing the traditional social and sexual roles: the woman then escapes her position of receiver / receptacle to assert herself by as a speaker and actor. It is in this defense of daring women that the originality of the Heptameron lies in part. The most controversial heroines indeed go further than the simple reversal of the polarities of the sexual roles. Marguerite de Navarre's project is therefore not "to overturn the order of things", aware that in this case “history would ultimately come back to the same thing” (Irigaray 32). She goes further and rejects the traditional dichotomy of the sign, thereby inventing an agency for which the female / male binary no longer makes sense.
Baider, Fabienne
Masculinist metaphors, feminist research Journal Article
In: Imagery. de, 5 (2003), pp. 6-35, 2003.
@article{Baider2003b,
title = {Masculinist metaphors, feminist research},
author = {Fabienne Baider},
year = {2003},
date = {2003-01-01},
journal = {Imagery. de},
volume = {5},
number = {2003},
pages = {6-35},
abstract = {This paper tests the cross-linguistic validity of Hines's findings on English animal-based metaphors depicting women as objects of sexual desire. Data from printed and online sources reveal that comparable metaphors are available in French and Italian but also that they have a wider range of applicability. Relevant metaphorical expressions may serve to represent women in a sexist way (via comparison to such categories of animals as livestock, game, pets, insects, and wild animals) but also to discriminate against other groups perceived as opponents or socially marginal (i.e. competitors like the police or inferiors like homosexuals) by the mainstream dominant group. Our data also show that not all metaphorical epithets are used the same way: some are reserved for talking to people, others for referring to them; some metaphorical address terms serve as expressions of endearment, others as insults; some lexicalised metaphors focus on sexual desirability, others on sexual denigration, still others on other types of trivialisation. Our findings suggest that the ideological significance of a metaphor (i.e. the mappings between its source and target domains and its specific lexical encoding) can be better assessed when explored in relation to complementary or neighbouring domains of experience. Finally, our discussion indicates, more generally, a need to take into account the contextualisation of metaphors in providing an account of their linguistic, social and cultural import. Der Beitrag fragt nach der einzelsprachenübergreifenden Gültigkeit von Hines Ergebnissen zu englischen Tiermetaphern, die Frauen als Objekt sexueller Begierde beschreiben. Daten aus verschiedenen Quellen belegen, daß es vergleichbare Metaphorisierungen auch im Italienischen und Französischen gibt, die allerdings ein breiteres Anwendungsspektrum aufweisen. Entsprechende metaphorische Ausdrücke können etwa dazu dienen, Frauen sexistisch darzustellen (durch Analogien zu Kategorien wie 'Vieh', 'Spiel', 'Haustiere', 'Insekten' und 'Wildtiere'), oder auch andere gesellschaftliche Gruppen, die im Verhältnis zur dominanten Gruppe abweichende Merkmale aufweisen, zu diskriminieren (z.B. Homosexuelle). Unsere Auswertungen zeigen ebenfalls, dass nicht alle metaphorischen Attribute in der gleichen Weise benutzt werden: einige werden aussschließlich zum Ansprechen von Personen verwendet, andere, um über sie zu sprechen; einige dienen als Koseformen, andere als Beleidigungen; verschiedene lexikalisierte Metaphern fokussieren auf sexuelles Verlangen, andere auf sexuelles Herabwürdigen, wieder andere auf weitere Typen von Geringschätzungen. Unsere Ergebnisse legen nahe, dass die ideologische Bedeutung einer Metapher (d.h. die mappings zwischen der Ausgangs-und Zieldomäne und ihre spezifische lexikalische Enkodierung) besser bestimmt werden kann, wenn sie im Verhältnis zu komplementären oder benachbarten Erfahrungsbereichen untersucht wird. Schließlich zeigt unsere Studie auch auf einer allgemeineren Ebene die Notwendigkeit, die Kontextualisierung von Metaphern in die Analyse mit einzubeziehen, um ihre sprachliche, soziale und kulturelle Bedeutung zu erhellen.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
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}
This paper tests the cross-linguistic validity of Hines's findings on English animal-based metaphors depicting women as objects of sexual desire. Data from printed and online sources reveal that comparable metaphors are available in French and Italian but also that they have a wider range of applicability. Relevant metaphorical expressions may serve to represent women in a sexist way (via comparison to such categories of animals as livestock, game, pets, insects, and wild animals) but also to discriminate against other groups perceived as opponents or socially marginal (i.e. competitors like the police or inferiors like homosexuals) by the mainstream dominant group. Our data also show that not all metaphorical epithets are used the same way: some are reserved for talking to people, others for referring to them; some metaphorical address terms serve as expressions of endearment, others as insults; some lexicalised metaphors focus on sexual desirability, others on sexual denigration, still others on other types of trivialisation. Our findings suggest that the ideological significance of a metaphor (i.e. the mappings between its source and target domains and its specific lexical encoding) can be better assessed when explored in relation to complementary or neighbouring domains of experience. Finally, our discussion indicates, more generally, a need to take into account the contextualisation of metaphors in providing an account of their linguistic, social and cultural import. Der Beitrag fragt nach der einzelsprachenübergreifenden Gültigkeit von Hines Ergebnissen zu englischen Tiermetaphern, die Frauen als Objekt sexueller Begierde beschreiben. Daten aus verschiedenen Quellen belegen, daß es vergleichbare Metaphorisierungen auch im Italienischen und Französischen gibt, die allerdings ein breiteres Anwendungsspektrum aufweisen. Entsprechende metaphorische Ausdrücke können etwa dazu dienen, Frauen sexistisch darzustellen (durch Analogien zu Kategorien wie 'Vieh', 'Spiel', 'Haustiere', 'Insekten' und 'Wildtiere'), oder auch andere gesellschaftliche Gruppen, die im Verhältnis zur dominanten Gruppe abweichende Merkmale aufweisen, zu diskriminieren (z.B. Homosexuelle). Unsere Auswertungen zeigen ebenfalls, dass nicht alle metaphorischen Attribute in der gleichen Weise benutzt werden: einige werden aussschließlich zum Ansprechen von Personen verwendet, andere, um über sie zu sprechen; einige dienen als Koseformen, andere als Beleidigungen; verschiedene lexikalisierte Metaphern fokussieren auf sexuelles Verlangen, andere auf sexuelles Herabwürdigen, wieder andere auf weitere Typen von Geringschätzungen. Unsere Ergebnisse legen nahe, dass die ideologische Bedeutung einer Metapher (d.h. die mappings zwischen der Ausgangs-und Zieldomäne und ihre spezifische lexikalische Enkodierung) besser bestimmt werden kann, wenn sie im Verhältnis zu komplementären oder benachbarten Erfahrungsbereichen untersucht wird. Schließlich zeigt unsere Studie auch auf einer allgemeineren Ebene die Notwendigkeit, die Kontextualisierung von Metaphern in die Analyse mit einzubeziehen, um ihre sprachliche, soziale und kulturelle Bedeutung zu erhellen.
2002
Baider, Fabienne
Sexism And Language : What Can The Web Teach Us? Journal Article
In: Digital Studies / The digital field, 2002.
@article{Baider2002b,
title = {Sexism And Language : What Can The Web Teach Us?},
author = {Fabienne Baider},
doi = {10.16995 / dscn.174},
year = {2002},
date = {2002-10-01},
journal = {Digital Studies / The digital field},
abstract = {"Quelle grande dame!" "What a great lady!" wrote a reader in L'actualité, a Québécois magazine, on the 1st of November 1997. He was writing about a woman minister. The adjective grand here means "great" because it is placed before the noun. It would mean "tall" when placed after the noun. This is what linguists call a differential meaning for the same adjective. In the French language, there are quite a number of adjectives changing their meaning according to their position before or after the noun. In our example, had the minister previously mentioned been a man, the writer would have had a choice. He could have used the paradigmatic equivalent of dame which is monsieur "Quel grand monsieur!" or he could have used the noun homme, "Quel grand homme!". Both expressions mean the same thing : "What a great man". However, describing a woman, he could not use the noun femme, the paradigmatic equivalent of homme since "Quelle grande femme" means "What a tall woman!" and not "What a great woman!". Somehow, the noun femme prevents the positive connotation of the adjective when placed before the nouns dame, monsieur and homme. In this essay I will mention my hypothesis [2] to explain why these adjectives behave differently when qualifying the noun homme or femme. This hypothesis will be substantiated with on-line data and other computerized resources. I will then ask the question, based on the findings about women writers and their usage of adjectives, whether this differential meaning could symbolize sexism in language.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
"Quelle grande dame!" "What a great lady!" wrote a reader in L'actualité, a Québécois magazine, on the 1st of November 1997. He was writing about a woman minister. The adjective grand here means "great" because it is placed before the noun. It would mean "tall" when placed after the noun. This is what linguists call a differential meaning for the same adjective. In the French language, there are quite a number of adjectives changing their meaning according to their position before or after the noun. In our example, had the minister previously mentioned been a man, the writer would have had a choice. He could have used the paradigmatic equivalent of dame which is monsieur "Quel grand monsieur!" or he could have used the noun homme, "Quel grand homme!". Both expressions mean the same thing : "What a great man". However, describing a woman, he could not use the noun femme, the paradigmatic equivalent of homme since "Quelle grande femme" means "What a tall woman!" and not "What a great woman!". Somehow, the noun femme prevents the positive connotation of the adjective when placed before the nouns dame, monsieur and homme. In this essay I will mention my hypothesis [2] to explain why these adjectives behave differently when qualifying the noun homme or femme. This hypothesis will be substantiated with on-line data and other computerized resources. I will then ask the question, based on the findings about women writers and their usage of adjectives, whether this differential meaning could symbolize sexism in language.
Baider, Fabienne
Introduction: Language, society and literature: midwife or woman-witch? Journal Article
In: Women in French Studies, 10 (1), pp. 13-22, 2002.
@article{Baider2002,
title = {Introduction: Language, society and literature: midwife or woman-witch?},
author = {Fabienne Baider},
doi = { 10.1353 / wfs.2002.0026},
year = {2002},
date = {2002-01-01},
journal = {Women in French Studies},
volume = {10},
number = {1},
pages = {13-22},
abstract = {Fabienne H. Baider has been a professor of French linguistics at the University of Cyprus since 2000. She obtained the first doctorate awarded at the University of Toronto in linguistics and in Women's Studies. Her research focuses on the semantics of word and sentence, in a sociological and feminist approach. Fabienne H. Baider is the author of Hommes galants, femmes Facile (Fidès, 2003), a work which affirms the social and cultural construction of gender and recalls the role of institutions in linguistic use and norms; his recent publications include studies of historical lexicology and linguistic analyzes of literary texts. She is preparing a collection of bilingual English-French articles entitled Invitation au voyage (L'Harmattan, 2003), devoted to questions of identity and otherness as constructed and perceived in tourist discourse. 1. That is to say including the historical documents on which Domingues, George and Caron-Leulliez are working (infra). 2. In fact, from a linguistic point of view, persecution is expressed by the feminine in the expression the witch hunt (and not the witch hunt) to designate the "systematic pursuit of political opponents and in particular to evoke the period of McCarthyism ”(Petit Robert, 2000). We prefer to refer to the masculine to denote intelligence, as well as the expressions: one must not be a sorcerer, "one must not be skilful or skilful" (and no one must not be a witch); there is nothing rocket science, "it is not difficult", he is not a great sorcerer, and so on. Likewise, if the masculine could express the repulsive physical aspect (an old wizard) at the time of Littré, it is nowadays the feminine which symbolizes a deformed physique (an old witch). 3. While 90% of women accused of witchcraft in regions such as Hungary, Denmark and England, 90% of accused in Iceland were male. In France, more than half of the accused before the Paris parliament were men (Briggs, 260-61). In addition, many accusations started with simple arguments between women, very active in building 'bad' reputations using rumor; studies of the province of Lorraine have revealed that 43% of the witnesses at the accused's trials were indeed women (Briggs, 264-65). 4. The thesis of Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English according to which midwives were in particular targeted has been questioned by the work of Purkiss (1996), who would have established the opposite: midwives would have even more helped to track witches rather than being victims and being a licensed midwife reduced her chances of being accused - but who could boast of being a licensed midwife? However, as soon as the first prison reports appeared, the clergy accused women of infanticide who used contraceptives made from medicinal plants or abortive plants. These accusations were part of a formal attack on midwives and healers who still practiced herbal medicine and incantations. It should be noted, as Salah Khan underlines (infra), that the clergy played a preponderant role, because once the crime was in the domain of witchcraft, it no longer fell exclusively under secular jurisdiction; witchcraft was no longer an ordinary crime, but a most serious religious crime. The usual medieval procedure which excluded the use of torture and allowed the free defense of the accused was then changed. This proc ... use of torture and allowed the free defense of the accused was then changed. This proc ... use of torture and allowed the free defense of the accused was then changed.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Fabienne H. Baider has been a professor of French linguistics at the University of Cyprus since 2000. She obtained the first doctorate awarded at the University of Toronto in linguistics and in Women's Studies. Her research focuses on the semantics of word and sentence, in a sociological and feminist approach. Fabienne H. Baider is the author of Hommes galants, femmes Facile (Fidès, 2003), a work which affirms the social and cultural construction of gender and recalls the role of institutions in linguistic use and norms; his recent publications include studies of historical lexicology and linguistic analyzes of literary texts. She is preparing a collection of bilingual English-French articles entitled Invitation au voyage (L'Harmattan, 2003), devoted to questions of identity and otherness as constructed and perceived in tourist discourse. 1. That is to say including the historical documents on which Domingues, George and Caron-Leulliez are working (infra). 2. In fact, from a linguistic point of view, persecution is expressed by the feminine in the expression the witch hunt (and not the witch hunt) to designate the "systematic pursuit of political opponents and in particular to evoke the period of McCarthyism ”(Petit Robert, 2000). We prefer to refer to the masculine to denote intelligence, as well as the expressions: one must not be a sorcerer, "one must not be skilful or skilful" (and no one must not be a witch); there is nothing rocket science, "it is not difficult", he is not a great sorcerer, and so on. Likewise, if the masculine could express the repulsive physical aspect (an old wizard) at the time of Littré, it is nowadays the feminine which symbolizes a deformed physique (an old witch). 3. While 90% of women accused of witchcraft in regions such as Hungary, Denmark and England, 90% of accused in Iceland were male. In France, more than half of the accused before the Paris parliament were men (Briggs, 260-61). In addition, many accusations started with simple arguments between women, very active in building 'bad' reputations using rumor; studies of the province of Lorraine have revealed that 43% of the witnesses at the accused's trials were indeed women (Briggs, 264-65). 4. The thesis of Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English according to which midwives were in particular targeted has been questioned by the work of Purkiss (1996), who would have established the opposite: midwives would have even more helped to track witches rather than being victims and being a licensed midwife reduced her chances of being accused - but who could boast of being a licensed midwife? However, as soon as the first prison reports appeared, the clergy accused women of infanticide who used contraceptives made from medicinal plants or abortive plants. These accusations were part of a formal attack on midwives and healers who still practiced herbal medicine and incantations. It should be noted, as Salah Khan underlines (infra), that the clergy played a preponderant role, because once the crime was in the domain of witchcraft, it no longer fell exclusively under secular jurisdiction; witchcraft was no longer an ordinary crime, but a most serious religious crime. The usual medieval procedure which excluded the use of torture and allowed the free defense of the accused was then changed. This proc ... use of torture and allowed the free defense of the accused was then changed. This proc ... use of torture and allowed the free defense of the accused was then changed.