The language-planning effect of newspaper editorial policy: Gender differences in The Washington Post

Abstract

We examined the effect of general statements against sexist usage in the style manual for The Washington Post. We selected a minor usage pattern that was not the subject of an explicit rule, namely, the difference in the use of a middle initial in references to men and to women. This usage was taken as an index of the possible effect of a general policy statement on newswriting practice. We found significantly less difference by sex in this usage subsequent to the publication of the style manual. We take the difference as support for the effectiveness of language planning in this instance, although the significance of our results as evidence of real equality of treatment remains somewhat problematic. There are different points of view in sociolinguistics about the relative value of quantitative versus more directly interpretive methods. We present in some detail the reasoning behind the use of quantitative methods to support an investigation such as ours. (Language planning, language treatment, language and sex, language and the media, style and usage, forms of reference, statistical methods)