Gender Bias and Sexism in Language: an Analysis of English and Italian Job Vacancies

Over the last decade, public debate has concentrated on the issue of gender and sexism and of their relationship with language. In particular, sexism, which is discrimination on the basis of sexual membership, pervades society and language too. The main purpose of this dissertation is to understand to what extent sexism is rooted in language use and what strategies have been adopted to avoid the use of sexist language. The first chapter provides an overview of the main topics of this work, such as the definition of gender along with the concept of linguistic gender, the issue of linguistic sexism and of sexism in society, and the work of Feminist Linguistics towards overcoming gender bias in language. The second chapter is devoted to the explanation of the strategies used to promote Non-sexual language, such as Gender Neutralization and Gender Specification and also provides an insight into the case of Italian language. In the third chapter, through the use of a concordancing software, called AntConc, job applications, both in English and in Italian are analyzed; the main aim of this research is to understand whether and to what extent sexist language use is present in job applications and whether strategies for linguistic equality have been employed.