In many languages masculine nouns and pronouns can be interpreted to refer to both male and female referents. However, even when the authors expressly point out that masculine forms are being used to refer to both women and men, readers and listeners predominantly form mental images of men. A gender-fair language that uses either masculine and feminine forms or gender-neutral forms to refer to women and men more equally elicits mental images of women and men. Critics often argue, however, that gender-fair language makes texts less comprehensible (readable). The present study tests this assumption for the German language: 355 students read a randomly assigned text that either used masculine-only forms or consistently used both masculine and feminine forms. After that, they answered the comprehensibility questionnaire by Friedrich (2017). Participants who had read a text in gender-fair language did not give statistically significant lower ratings of comprehensibility than participants who had read a text that used masculine-only forms (partial &eegr;2 < .01; p > .05). The results indicate that the use of gender-fair language does not impair the comprehensibility of texts.

中文翻译：

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性别公平语言的使用是否会影响文本的可理解性？

在许多语言中，阳性名词和代词可以解释为指代男性和女性所指对象。然而，即使作者明确指出男性形式被用来指代女性和男性，读者和听众主要形成男性的心理形象。使用男性和女性形式或性别中性形式来指称女性和男性的性别公平语言更平等地引发了女性和男性的心理形象。然而，批评者经常争辩说，性别公平的语言使文本更难理解（可读）。本研究测试了德语的这一假设：355 名学生阅读随机分配的文本，该文本要么使用仅使用男性化形式，要么始终使用男性化和女性化形式。之后，他们回答了 Friedrich (2017) 的可理解性问卷。与阅读仅使用男性化形式的文本的参与者相比，阅读性别公平语言文本的参与者在可理解性方面的评分并没有显着降低（部分 &eegr;2 < .01; p > .05）。结果表明，使用性别公平语言不会损害文本的可理解性。