Binnen-I

In German, a word-internal capital I (German: Binnen-I) is a modern, non-standard, mixed case typographic convention used to indicate gender inclusivity for nouns having to do with people, by using a capital letter 'I' inside the word (Binnenmajuskel, literally "internal capital", i.e. camel case) surrounded by lower-case letters. An example is the word LehrerInnen ("teachers", both male and female). With a lower case I in that position, Lehrerinnen is just the standard word for "female teachers."

The Binnen-I is a non-standard solution for how to economically express a position of gender equality in one German word, with an expression that would otherwise require three words. In English, the issue of ungendered words might be expressed by simple, unmarked, ungendered words such as teacher (or teachers), students, professors, and so on, without implying a gender, but the situation in German is more difficult, since all nouns have one of three genders, masculine, feminine, or neuter.

When used with a noun designating a group of people, a Binnen-I indicates that the intended meaning of the word is both the femininine as well as the masculine forms, without having to write out both forms of the noun. It is formed from the feminine form of a noun containing the –in suffix (singular) or –innen suffix (plural). For example, Lehrerinnen (women teachers) would be written LehrerInnen, with the meaning (men and women) teachers, without having to write out both gender forms, or use the semantically unmarked masculine.

A pedestrian zone sign  on the main street of Vienna's Meidling district, using internal-I FußgängerInnenzone.

Background

A sign for dog owners in a Vienna park with two Binnen-I examples. 

Part of the academic ferment in the United States in second-wave feminism in the 1970s, was the attention paid to gender bias in language, including "the uncovering of the gendered nature of many linguistic rules and norms" and how the use of language could be analyzed from a feminist viewpoint. Studies showed the sexually biased use of language including "he" as a generic pronoun meaning both males and females and how this wasn't just an outgrowth of natural language evolution but in fact was enforced by prescriptivist (male) grammarians. By the 1980s and 1990s, feminist critique of language had spread to Germany, and other countries.

History

Introduction: nouns and gender

Example of a Binnen-I  on a traffic sign in Linz, Austria.

Main article: Grammatical gender in German

German has three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. With the exception of some relationship nouns (mother, father, daughter, etc.) that are tied to the sex of the person, the gender of a noun is arbitrary, and can be any one of the three; for example, masculine: Knoblauch (garlic); feminine: Steckrübe (turnip), Person (person); or neuter: Haus (house), Mädchen (girl).

In German, as in English, some nouns designating people come in masculine/feminine pairs; in German they are often distinguished by an –in suffix in the feminine (Schauspieler/Schauspielerin), where English sometimes uses –ess (actor/actress). Similarly, in both languages the feminine form of such nouns is semantically marked and can only refer to a woman in each language, whereas the masculine form is unmarked and can either designate a man, if known, or an unknown person of indeterminate sex.

In the plural, unlike English, German generally has separate plurals for masculine and feminine (Juristen/Juristinnen: male attorneys/female attorneys), there is no exact equivalent in English, where the plural in many cases (attorneys, teachers, actors) is semantically unmarked, and doesn't imply either men or women. The case in German is more like the English pair prince/princess, where there are two plurals princes/princesses and picking either one implies a gender.

In referring to a mixed (male/female) group of people, historically one would use the generic masculine, for example, Kollegen (masc. pl.; "colleagues"). To make it clear that both genders are included, was to use a three word phrase, with the masculine and feminine versions of the noun, joined by und ("and"), ie., "Kolleginnen und Kollegen" (women colleagues and male colleagues).

Feminist Sprachkritik

The bottom sign PfadfinderInnenheim points to a Scouting residence for Boy- and Girl scouts.

At the end of the 1970s, groundbreaking work created the field of feminist linguists and critiqued both the inherent structure and usage of German on the one hand, and on the other, men's and women's language behavior, and concluded that German is antagonistic towards women (frauenfeindlich), for example, in the use of the generic masculine form when referring to mixed groups which makes women have no representation in the language, mirrors a "Man's world," and makes it seem like students, professors, employees, bosses, politicians, every group spoken about—is male, and women were invisible in the patterns of speech; and went on to say that language doesn't only mirror reality, it creates it.

Brenner, Julia (2008). Männersprache / Frauensprache : geschlechtsspezifische Kommunikation [Men's Language/Women's Language: Gender-specific Communication] (student thesis) (in German). Munich: GRIN Verlag. ISBN 978-3-638-90475-9. OCLC 724724124. Retrieved 15 February 2018. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

The use of word-internal capital I in Germany in this sense dates to the 1980s, in response to activism by German feminists for orthographic changes to promote gender equality in German writing. Some of this was called Frauendeutsch (women's German).

It's a solution to a problem of word economy: how do you avoid saying a three-word compound, e.g., Lehrer und Lehrerinnen (male teachers and female teachers) when you want to say teachers in German? There are four methods, of varying levels of acceptance:

• Paarformel: Lehrer und Lehrerin; Pl. Lehrer und Lehrerinnen
• Parentheses: Lehrer(in) Pl: Lehrer(innen)
• Slash: Lehrer/in Pl: Lehrer/innen
• internal-I: LehrerIn pl: LehrerInnen

In 1990, this usage caused a kerfuffle in the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia, when an official complaint was lodged by the chair of the Free Democratic Party against the Green Party who had used it in some of their parliamentary motions, saying that it was "incorrect according to the German language". The President of the Landtag responded by declaring that printed documents destined to be distributed throughout the state had to follow the official Duden language standard, until such time that the Duden accepted the capital I. The same year, the Wiesbaden Magistrate recommended the use of word-internal capital I for municipal office use, and prohibited the use of purely masculine terminology. The Wiesbaden women's affairs officer said that this had already been standard usage by the mayor and by some departments and agencies by 1990.

Usage

As Binnen-I is a typographic convention, it is seen in writing, and the internal capital I does not affect pronunciation of a word written with Binnen-I. However, in some cases, there is an attempt to indicate the convention in pronunciation, by using a glottal stop to create a momentary pause before the 'I'.

See also

• Capitalization
• Capitalization in English
• German orthography
• Grammatical gender
• Language and gender
• Letter case

References

• Baron, Dennis E. (July 1987). Grammar and Gender. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-03883-5. OCLC 780952035. Retrieved 15 February 2018. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Bodine, Anne (1975). "Androcentrism in prescriptive grammar: singular 'they', sex-indefinite 'he', and 'he or she'". Language in Society. 4 (2): 129–146. doi:10.1017/s0047404500004607. OCLC 4668940636. Retrieved 15 February 2018. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Brenner, Julia (2008). Männersprache / Frauensprache : geschlechtsspezifische Kommunikation [Men's Language/Women's Language: Gender-specific Communication] (student thesis) (in German). Munich: GRIN Verlag. ISBN 978-3-638-90475-9. OCLC 724724124. Retrieved 15 February 2018. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Cameron, Deborah (1998). "9. Androcentrism in prescriptive grammar: singular 'they', sex-indefinite 'he', and 'he or she'". The Feminist Critique of Language: A Reader (2 ed.). London: Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-415-16400-9. OCLC 635293367. Retrieved 15 February 2018. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Hellinger, Marlis (8 March 2013). Sprachwandel und feministische Sprachpolitik: Internationale Perspektiven (in German). Opladen: West Deutscher Verlag. ISBN 978-3-322-83937-4. OCLC 715231718. Retrieved 15 February 2018. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Pauwels, Anne (15 April 2008). "24. Linguistic Sexism and Feminist Linguistic Activism". In Holmes, Janet; Meyerhoff, Miriam (eds.). The Handbook of Language and Gender. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-470-75670-6. Retrieved 15 February 2018.
• Horny, Hildegard (1995). "13. Feministische Sprachkritik [Feminist Language Critique]". In Stötzel, Georg; Wengeler, Martin (eds.). Kontroverse Begriffe: Geschichte des öffentlichen Sprachgebrauchs in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland [Controversial Terms: History of Everyday Language in the Federal Republic of Germany] (in German). Vol. 4. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. pp. 517–562. ISBN 978-3-11-014106-1. OCLC 802718544. Retrieved 5 January 2018. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |lay-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |lay-source= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |lay-summary= ignored (help)CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Klass, Alex (2010). Die feministische Sprachkritik und ihre Auswirkungen auf die deutsche Gegenwartssprache [Feminist Linguistic Criticism and its Effect on Contemporary German] (in German). GRIN Verlag. ISBN 978-3-640-60500-2. OCLC 945944735. Retrieved 15 February 2018. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Leue, Elisabeth (2000). "Gender And Language In Germany". Debatte: Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe. 8 (2). Routledge: 163–176. doi:10.1080/09651560020017206. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Stötzel, Georg; Wengeler, Martin; Böke, Karin (1995). Kontroverse Begriffe: Geschichte des öffentlichen Sprachgebrauchs in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (in German). Vol. 4. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-014106-1. OCLC 802718544. Retrieved 5 January 2018.

External links

• Sprach-Feminismus (in German)