Gender-inclusive Language Reform in Educational Writing in Singapore and the Philippines: A Corpus-based Study

Abstract

In this paper we examine the adoption of some gender-inclusive features (generic nouns and pronouns) in two varieties of “outer-circle” Englishes. The focus is on educational texts given the importance of the educational domain in the adoption and spread of language planning. The texts are from the Singapore and Philippine sections of the International Corpus of English [ICE]. Overall results point to minimal adoption of gender-inclusive alternatives for generic he and masculine generic nouns although differences emerge in relation to variety and type of text/genre.