FEMINIZATION OF PROFESSIONAL TITLES IN FRENCH, SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE NEWSPAPERS

This dissertation examines the strategies used to feminize professional titles in French, Spanish, and Portuguese newspapers. It addresses the growing use of distinctive feminine forms (DFFs) in Romance languages, that retain grammatical gender, and assesses how DFFs are employed in contemporary written discourse. The study analyzes corpora from SketchEngine for each language (French Trends, Spanish Trends, Portuguese Trends) to identify patterns in the formation and frequency of DFFs. A central focus of the dissertation is testing the Distinctive Feminine Forms Hypothesis (DFFH), which predicts that writers will prefer morphologically distinct feminine forms over masculine or neutral ones when such forms are available. These findings are then compared to recommendations from official language guides and prior academic studies. The analysis reveals a consistent preference for DFFs across all three languages, which supports the DFFH. Additionally, language-external factors such as negative semantic associations with certain suffixes, appeared to have greater influence on instances in which DFFs were not chosen, than internal factors such as nominal morphology. The results contribute to our understanding of linguistic feminization and have implications for language planning, educational materials, and gender equity in professional representation.