GENDER CORRECTNESS IN THE MODERN GERMAN OCCUPATION TITLES

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of the gender equality in the occupation titles in the modern German language. Basing on a corpus analysis it is shown that the occupation titles in the German job advertisements are mainly used with an explicit reference to the both sexes. In the most cases the reference to the both male and female sexes is given with the help of the note m/w in the end of the advertisement title; the second place has a female suffix –in, that is added in different ways to the male occupation titles. It was also found, that the reference to the both sexes is often excessive, so far as it is used in different forms twice or even more times in the same advertisement. Besides, in many cases this reference is also purely formal. The reference on the sex of the candidate can be secured with the help of a raw of morphological, orthographical, lexical means, of which the lexical ones demand the most effort of the author and for that reason are rarely used just formally. Occupation titles, formulated exclusively in a male or exclusively in a female manner are very rare. The female titles apply mainly to the occupation without need for special education while male titles are more often used for the labour occupations.