Can gender-fair language strategies modulate male bias? A case for the novel schwa-ending strategy in Italian

In this thesis we aim to investigate the so-called “male bias” in Italian. After introducing the concept of male bias and describing the literature proving the presence of sexist language in Italian, we touch on some of the studies exploring gender-fair strategies in other languages. The study we conduct is a replication of Lindqvist, A., Renström, E. A., & Gustafsson Sendén, M. (2019). Reducing a Male Bias in Language? Establishing the Efficiency of Three Different Gender-Fair Language Strategies. Specifically, we want to verify whether the use of some language-fair strategies elicit male bias, and if they can mitigate it as compared to a baseline condition.