The The language that distinguishes human beings from other entities, making them perceptibly unique with their intellectual, emotional, and cognitive qualities, is language. Through language, an individual is transformed from an ordinary entity into a human subject, paving the way for human subjectivity. With the unlimited linguistic capability of the production domain, individuals who can communicate with their surroundings and other people are gradually compelled to relinquish some degree of their independence in order to construct a stronger community. Over time, these human collectives, known as societies, generate new assumptions within the aforementioned structure based on various variables such as beliefs, needs, politics, and technology. This, in turn, contributes to the emergence of new forms of power. Consequently, in the increasingly challenging landscape of communication, the principle of equality between individuals is compromised, and undoubtedly, the first victims of this are women, children, and individuals with special needs. The undeniable presence of these individuals in society is the fundamental reason for the emergence of new linguistic patterns and communicative prejudices within the basic linguistic universe. The surrender to a gender-based inequality and a male-dominated perspective of social power over time generates a lexicon in the fundamental realm of language that restricts, diminishes, points to, and subtly marginalizes the subjectivity of women in relation to men. These usages can also be observed within Sign Language, which facilitates communication among individuals with hearing impairments through visual descriptions. With this study, the goal is to identify certain words in Turkish Sign Language that marginalize the female gender and to emphasize the inclusive aspect of Turkish Sign Language, which is one of our national values.
Turkish sign language, gender, women, basic lexicon, TID.