Gender-fair language in the context of leadership: Preventing the lack of fit for women

Women are still underrepresented in leadership due to a perceived a ‘lack of fit’. Thus, women are hired less likely, evaluated unfavorably or are less willing to take over a leadership role than their male counterparts. Because gender-fair language (e.g., feminine-masculine word pairs, German: ‘Geschäftsführerin/Geschäftsführer’, CEO, fem./CEO, masc.) leads to a higher mental inclusion of women compared to generic masculine forms (German: ‘Geschäftsführer’, CEO,masc.), we argue that masculine forms endorse the ‘lack of fit’ for women in leadership, whereas gender-fair language reduces it. Three studies support our assumption. Masculine forms led to a ‘lack of fit’ for women in leader selection: they were hired less likely (Study 1) and evaluated less favorably (Study 2) than their male counterparts. Moreover, women showed less willingness to apply when masculine forms were used in the advertisement for a leadership position. Contrary, no such gender-bias was obtained in case of gender-fair language.

Language context modulates reading route: an electrical neuroimaging study.

INTRODUCTION The orthographic depth hypothesis (Katz and Feldman, 1983) posits that different reading routes are engaged depending on the type of grapheme/phoneme correspondence of the language being read. Shallow orthographies with consistent grapheme/phoneme correspondences favor encoding via non-lexical pathways, where each grapheme is sequentially mapped to its corresponding phoneme. In contrast, deep orthographies with inconsistent grapheme/phoneme correspondences favor lexical pathways, where phonemes are retrieved from specialized memory structures. This hypothesis, however, lacks compelling empirical support. The aim of the present study was to investigate the impact of orthographic depth on reading route selection using a within-subject design. METHOD We presented the same pseudowords (PWs) to highly proficient bilinguals and manipulated the orthographic depth of PW reading by embedding them among two separated German or French language contexts, implicating respectively, shallow or deep orthography. High density electroencephalography was recorded during the task. RESULTS The topography of the ERPs to identical PWs differed 300-360 ms post-stimulus onset when the PWs were read in different orthographic depth context, indicating distinct brain networks engaged in reading during this time window. The brain sources underlying these topographic effects were located within left inferior frontal (German > French), parietal (French > German) and cingular areas (German > French). CONCLUSION Reading in a shallow context favors non-lexical pathways, reflected in a stronger engagement of frontal phonological areas in the shallow versus the deep orthographic context. In contrast, reading PW in a deep orthographic context recruits less routine non-lexical pathways, reflected in a stronger engagement of visuo-attentional parietal areas in the deep versus shallow orthographic context. These collective results support a modulation of reading route by orthographic depth.

Model-Centric, Context-Aware Software Adaptation

Software must be constantly adapted to changing requirements. The time scale, abstraction level and granularity of adaptations may vary from short-term, fine-grained adaptation to long-term, coarse-grained evolution. Fine-grained, dynamic and context-dependent adaptations can be particularly difficult to realize in long-lived, large-scale software systems. We argue that, in order to effectively and efficiently deploy such changes, adaptive applications must be built on an infrastructure that is not just model-driven, but is both model-centric and context-aware. Specifically, this means that high-level, causally-connected models of the application and the software infrastructure itself should be available at run-time, and that changes may need to be scoped to the run-time execution context. We first review the dimensions of software adaptation and evolution, and then we show how model-centric design can address the adaptation needs of a variety of applications that span these dimensions. We demonstrate through concrete examples how model-centric and context-aware designs work at the level of application interface, programming language and runtime. We then propose a research agenda for a model-centric development environment that supports dynamic software adaptation and evolution.

Meta-Environment and Executable Meta-Language using Smalltalk: an Experience Report

Object-oriented modelling languages such as EMOF are often used to specify domain specific meta-models. However, these modelling languages lack the ability to describe behavior or operational semantics. Several approaches have used a subset of Java mixed with OCL as executable meta-languages. In this experience report we show how we use Smalltalk as an executable meta-language in the context of the Moose reengineering environment. We present how we implemented EMOF and its behavioral aspects. Over the last decade we validated this approach through incrementally building a meta-described reengineering environment. Such an approach bridges the gap between a code-oriented view and a meta-model driven one. It avoids the creation of yet another language and reuses the infrastructure and run-time of the underlying implementation language. It offers an uniform way of letting developers focus on their tasks while at the same time allowing them to meta-describe their domain model. The advantage of our approach is that developers use the same tools and environment they use for their regular tasks. Still the approach is not Smalltalk specific but can be applied to language offering an introspective API such as Ruby, Python, CLOS, Java and C#.

Context-Oriented Programming

Context-dependent behavior is becoming increasingly important for a wide range of application domains, from pervasive computing to common business applications. Unfortunately, mainstream programming languages do not provide mechanisms that enable software entities to adapt their behavior dynamically to the current execution context. This leads developers to adopt convoluted designs to achieve the necessary runtime flexibility. We propose a new programming technique called Context-oriented Programming (COP) which addresses this problem. COP treats context explicitly, and provides mechanisms to dynamically adapt behavior in reaction to changes in context, even after system deployment at runtime. In this paper we lay the foundations of COP, show how dynamic layer activation enables multi-dimensional dispatch, illustrate the application of COP by examples in several language extensions, and demonstrate that COP is largely independent of other commitments to programming style.

Caregiver Responses to the Language Mixing of a Young Trilingual

The situation once described by Hoffmann (1985), in which children grow up exposed to three languages from an early age, is a reality for an increasing number of families. In Europe – as elsewhere – greater mobility is leading to greater numbers of mixed-language couples (Piller 2002), and, by extension, multilingual families. For such families, questions concerning the acquisition and maintenance of three or more languages in a natural environment are of direct relevance. Researchers in bilingualism have already pointed out the importance of social context for the acquisition of two languages in childhood, focusing in particular on the quantity and quality of exposure to the languages (De Houwer 1990; Döpke 1992; Okita 2002; Lanza 2004) or the prestige of the languages (Lambert 1977). In this paper, I will make use of the insights gained by such researchers and test them in a trilingual setting. The paper will focus mainly on one aspect, namely the conversational style of parents and caretakers. The data come from research being carried out in Switzerland and consist of 33 interviews with multilingual families, as well as case studies of two trilingual children. The findings attest to the importance of conversational style, but at the same time indicate that a number of further factors are also of great significance.

An overview of positive and negative effects of gender-fair language use

The basic principle of gender-fair language is symmetric linguistic treatment of women and men. Depending on the structure of the respective language, two principle strategies can be deployed to make a language gender-fair. In languages with few gender-differentiating forms, such as English, there is a tendency towards neutralization. Here, gender-unmarked forms such as police officer or chairperson are used to substitute the male-biased policeman or chairman. The second strategy, feminization, implies that feminine forms of human nouns are used more frequently and systematically to make female referents visible.Since the 1970s, gender-fair language has been suggested, if not prescribed, for both scientific and official texts and its positive effects are widely documented. The use of gender-fair language increases the cognitive availability of feminine exemplars. Also in an applied context women responding to job advertisements formulated in gender-fair language feel more motivated to apply for the position. However, "side effects" of gender-fair language have also been observed: For instance, women referred to with a gender-fair title (e.g. chairperson) were evaluated as lower in status than women referred to with a masculine generic (e.g. chairman). Similarily, social initiatives framed with the use of gender-fair language were evaluated less-favourably than initiatives using traditional language. This presentation presents the gender-fair language use in the framework of a social dilemma. In order to protect themselves (or initiatives they stand for) from being ascribed incompetence or a lower status, women may avoid feminine forms and thus contribute to the perpetuation of gender-unfair language, which may be detrimental for women in general. Raising awareness for this social concern, and framing it both in terms of group and individual interest can direct the discussion about gender-fair language into a broader perspective of gender equality.

Language as a barrier and facilitator for women's career progress

Purpose When applying for leadership positions or acting as leaders, women are still perceived with a ‘lack of fit’, thus hired less likely and evaluated less favorably than their male counterparts. In many languages, different language forms can be used to refer to both women and men: masculine forms (e.g., CEO in German: ‘Geschäftsführer’) and alternative forms (e.g., feminine‐masculine word pairs, CEO in German ‘Geschäftsführerin/Geschäftsführer’). We assumed that the use of masculine forms endorses the ‘lack of fit’ for women in leadership, whereas alternative forms reduce it. Design/Methodology Two studies tested the hypotheses by manipulating language forms (masculine forms vs. alternative forms) and gender of the target to hire/evaluate (female vs. male). Results The results indicated as predicted that masculine forms lead to the ‘lack of fit’ for women in the leadership context, whereas alternative forms reduce it. Women were less likely to be employed for leadership positions (Study 1) and evaluated less favorably as leaders (Study 2) than their male counterparts with masculine forms. However, with alternative forms no differences in employment decisions and evaluations of women and men were found. Limitations These two studies were conducted with student‐samples. Further research is needed to replicate effects with relevant samples as HRmanagers and to investigate underlying mechanisms. Research/Practical Implications Organizations may use alternative forms instead of masculine forms in job advertisements for leadership positions to overcome barriers for women in leadership. Originality/Value These are the first studies in testing the effects of language forms in the leader selection and evaluation.

Biactantial agreement in the Gongduk transitive verb in the broader Tibeto-Burman context

The Gongduk language is spoken in an enclave in south central Bhutan comprising several villages and hamlets in the mountains west of the Kurichu. The language occupies a distinct phylogenetic position within the Tibeto-Burman language family. The intransitive verb agrees for person and number with the subject, and the transitive shows biactantial agreement for person and number with both agent and patient. A morphological analysis has identified the individual agreement morphemes, their precise grammatical meaning and their patterns of allomorphy. The cognacy of the greater part of the desinences of the Gongduk verb with morphemes identifiable in the biactantial agreement systems of other Tibeto-Burman languages supports the view that at least a portion of such conjugational morphology must be reconstructed to the common ancestral language.