ON THE DOMESTICATION OF THE GRAMMATICAL GENDER

ABSTRACT

In this paper I discuss the concept of grammatical category, particularly gender, pointing out its limitations as a descriptive category of languages, from distinct worldviews, to resize its alleged universality. Grammatical categories known in the Western world are ontological constructions, which carries themselves out as presuppositions in the linguistic analysis since. Their structure based on a Western Being is not doubted in their whole existence, taming the description of several languages. However, from typological and anthropological linguistic studies which considered diverse epistemologies and cosmogonies, it was possible to verify discrepancies on gender as a linguistic category among different languages and cultures. This categorial imposition in the linguistic analysis turned up more violent when seen through decolonial lenses, which allowed us to outline not only a racist and sexist epistemology on the Western grammatical/linguistic contours, but also on confronting an ontological model to diverse worldviews. Thus, I offer some thoughts on the concept of grammatical gender as a category, from the decentralization of knowledge and from a linguistic topology of the being, aiming at comparing the conventional concept of gender, dear to the grammar tradition, and its correspondent in some non-Indo-European languages, highlighting its erasure in formulating the concept of grammatical universality.

Keywords:
grammar; category; gender; worldviews