The paper reverts to some of the main issues posed by the expression of the grammatical and conceptual notion of gender in English and Romanian. It revisits some aspects of defining gender and gender classes (including the epicene, common gender and neuter gender), neutralization, the idea of fuzziness in treating gender, and some of the errors and inconsistencies linked with the expression of gender in the light of the more recent linguistic approaches flawed by excessive feminism. The existence of the epicenes in the two languages compared, and the (provable) existence of a Common Gender in Romanian, as well (e.g. abonat, alegător, bolnav, creştin, pacient, zoolog) are also dealt with. A number of inconsistencies of usage, idiosyncrasies and cases of actual solecism are addressed, with illustrations inspired by the author’s didactic experience.
Key words:
gender, neutralization of gender, epicenes, feminism, sexism, solecism, inconsistency
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Journal “Diacronia” ISSN: 2393-1140 Frequency: 2 issues / year