Let's Talk About Gender: The Parental Use of Generic Language to Promote Anti-Transgender Prejudice

Abstract

The verbal language we use in our daily interactions embodies our social beliefs, promotes our prejudices, and provides us with context for our everyday cognitions (DeFranza, Mishra, & Mishra, 2020; Gelman, Taylor, Nyugen, Leaper & Bigler, 2004). Generic language, such as the phrase “girls play with dolls”, creates expectations about social categories and causes us to categorize individuals as members of specific social groups (Reiter & Frank, 2010). Previous literature has recognized verbal language as an instrument for conveying gender essentialist beliefs, specifically through the use of generics (Gelman et al., 2004). The present study explores the use of generic language and gender essentialism in parent-child conversations to better understand the transmission and maintenance of these prejudicial attitudes and beliefs. Does the specific language that parents use with their children exhibit their own prejudicial attitudes towards transgender individuals? In a two-part study, 191 parent-child dyads were tasked to discuss gendered activities depicted in a picture-book. Parents were additionally prompted to complete the Transgender Attitudes and Beliefs Scale (TABS), a three-dimensional explicit prejudice measure regarding their attitudes towards transgender individuals; final N = 82 (Kanamori, Cornelius-White, Pegors, Daniel & Hulgus, 2017). Results reveal a significant link between parents’ use of generic language and their own anti-transgender prejudices. Correlational results indicate an inverse relationship between parents’ proportion of utterances with a generic and their positive attitudes towards transgender individuals.