Study on Sexism in the English Language

1、study on sexism in the englishlanguagecontentsabstract in english .1abstract in chinese.11.introduction.22.the phenomena of sexism in english language . .22.1 male as norm attitude.32.1.1 generic masculine words.32.1.2 female as males appendix. .32.2. word order.32.3 sexism in social life.33. reason

2、s of sexism in the english language.33.1 “patriarchy” cultural stereotype.33.2 double criterion of discourse hegemony .43.3 “sex role” in community.43.4 results of theory of social identity.54.conclusion.5bibliography.6目录英语摘要.1汉语摘要.11简介.22英语语言性别歧视的仙现象.22.1男性作为标准.32.1.1阳性词泛指.32.1.2女性作为男性的附属.32.2 词序.3

3、2.3社会生活中的性别歧视.33 英语语言性别歧视的原因.33.1父权制文化积淀.33.2 话语霸权的双重标准.43.3 团体中的性别角色.43.4 社会身份理论的结果.54.结语.5参考文献.6study on sexism in the english languageabstract language plays an important role in society. as a phenomenon of society, language reflects all the sides of human society naturally. sexism is a phenomeno

4、n that takes a male-as-norm attitude, trivializing, insulting or rendering women invisible. as a special social phenomenon, sexism is inevitably reflected through language.to start with, the thesis analyses sexism in terms of the generic masculine words, word order and semantic derogation of women i

5、n greater detail. then the thesis traces the reasons for the occurrence of sexism in the english language. in nature, sexism in language reflects sexism in society. the two are closely related. social connotations of sexism in english tell the relationship between phenomenon of sexism in language an

6、d essence of sexism in society. key words sexism; phenomenon; reasons英语语言性别歧视研究摘要 语言在社会中所处的地位尤为重要。作为一种社会现象的语言，必然会反映出人类社会各种社会观念。性别歧视作为这其中的一种，是指把男性视作社会规范和中心，轻视侮辱女性或使她们显得微不足道，而这一特定的社会现象必然会在语言中折射出来。论文首先从阳性词泛指，词序等方面对英语中的性别歧视现象进行了详细的分析。接着论文剖析了英语中性别歧视现象形成的根源。从本质来说，英语语言中的性别歧视是社会中性别歧视的体现，两者紧密相连。性别歧视的社会内涵反映的就

7、是这种语言中的别歧视现象与社会中的性别歧视的本质的关系。关键词 性别歧视；现象；原因1.introductionlanguage is a mirror reflecting various kinds of phenomena such as beauty or ugliness, goodness or badness in the real world. the english countries which always claim that all man is born equal and have a lot of inequalities. the inequality bet

8、ween men and the women is the one. and this inequality is also reflected in the mirror of language. sexism in english languages has existed for a long time, which is reflection of the traditional ethics that men are superior to women. however, women are keener than men on social status. with progres

9、s of times and improvement of society, more and more women realize that they can also create the same working value as men. with the raise of womens liberation, and broad spread of mass media, the whole english worlds start a social revolution to eliminate the sexism in the english language. at the

10、beginning of 70s of the previous century, the womans right rise in the west, the english worlds start a literal revolution movement to eliminate the sexism, which is more fervent in american. the feminists claimed the equality of men and women. firstly they start to ask to eliminate the sexism lying

11、 in the english language. they fight heavily to change the phenomena of sexism in the english language.2.the phenomena of sexism in english languageat first, we must know what sexism is. according to webster ninth new collegiate dictionary, the definition of sexism is that prejudice or discriminatio

12、n based on sex: especially, discrimination against women. one explanation of sexism in american traditional dictionary is that the bias of a sort of gender members to other gender members. in language habit, sexism usually refers to the discrimination against women. well then, how does english langu

13、age discriminate female?2.1 male as norm attitudemales language is taken as standard and main body, while females language is just taken as appurtenant or ancilla. 2.1.1 generic masculine wordsthe third person pronoun “he” is partial to male in language use. he, his, and him refers to male, but when

14、 we dont know the sex of the person, he, his, and him can generally refer to the whole human beings, which is a rule in english. for instance, every student has to make up his own mind. although the total number of woman exceeds 50 percent, the proportion of “he and she” existing in literature is 4:

15、1 according to the statistics. spender incisively describes such phenomena: “now she represents a woman but he is mankind .if she enters mankind she loses herself in he.” 2.1.2 female as males appendixregarding female as males appendix is an embodiment of male as norm attitude. many english countrie

16、s have such customs that female change their names into their husband names when they get married. owning to such customs, mrs. bush, the wife of american president and mrs. thatcher, premier of britain can not make an exception. the phenomena of female as appendix of male also embody in the word-bu

17、ilding of geminate nouns. such as: author/authoress. we found that in the english language when the woman and the man have to use the different forms of the same noun. the masculine words commonly have no mark, namely, the noun itself, while the feminine words usually get mark when adding an affix t

18、o the masculine words, which is, having mark. such as those words steward/stewardess, male/female, hero/heroine, usher/usherette, etc.2.2. word orderwhen male and female come forth at the same time, the order of man and woman mostly follows the rule of male-as-norm “man is before and woman is after.

19、” such as those phrases in english language “mr. and mrs., his and hers, boys and girls, men and women, price and princess, brothers and sisters, and host and hostess, etc.” if the order of those words come upside down, people will feel it awkward to speak.2.3 sexism in social lifein the past, women

20、s social status is so low that their languages are often confined. the most obvious exemplification is that if women use some scrannel “expletives”, such as “damn it, shit etc” would be considered as terrible inelegant. people hope that they use some more elegant words as “oh dear or fudge.” the dif

21、ference is that the men can use all kinds of words to express their strong feelings arbitrarily without blame, while the women have no this privilege. “mr.” once has made many men feel pride. when people call “mr. -” the martial status of him is unknowable. but when it is turns to women, people usua

22、lly clarify the womens martial status: the female unmarried is called “miss. -”, otherwise called “mrs. - (husbands name)”. in british and american, women in soiree often are asked by others with a question “what does your husband do?” but there is never one who asks a man what does his wife do. if

23、there is some one really who asks such question, the man asked would be surprised to say: “shes my wife, thats what she does”. 3. reasons of sexism in the english languagein nature, sexism in language reflects sexism in society. the two are closely related. social connotations of sexism in english t

24、ell the relationship between phenomena of sexism in language and essence of sexism in society.3.1 “patriarchy” cultural stereotypestereotype is a cognitive manner and cognitive strategy of human beings, which is present as analogy procedure from specific to general. although it can help make things

25、category, it often has the abuse of overgeneralization. when stereotype is associated to moral belief, value system, and language culture, it is easy to make some subjective judge standard representing some hackneyed concept and discrimination manner . social linguists consider to this question what

26、 must be paid attention is that because of affection of patriarchies of thousands years, society has formed a bias to womens ability, value and behavior, and finally formed a thought stereotype and cultural stereotype and entered into the value system of social members. there are a lot of examples t

27、o testify it. to the relationship between cultural stereotype and language behavior, firstly we find that sexism in language has existed in many cultures, which reflects a popular language rule. and secondly we find that in mostly conditions, this cultural stereotype incarnates the phenomena of soci

28、al inequalities caused by ascendancy culture. thus, sexism in language is not only a question of language in use, but reflection of rooted social stereotype, and the results of the patriarchal view or male chauvinism, and also the direct embodiments of womens long suffering the unfair treatment in p

29、olitics, society, education, economy, and culture etc. 3.2 double criterion of discourse hegemony shakespeare has a logion “frailty, thy name is women ”. the feminists arent satisfying the sentence for its implied sexism and change its appearance to be a sentence “frailty, thy name is macho” with ra

30、ther cynical and sarcastic odor. from the diachronic angle to research the similar language phenomenon, we can find under this phenomenon three points should be paid attention. firstly, we notice that if we take gender as benchmark of classification in the english language, the amount of derogative

31、words used on female is far more than that of male.secondly, from the angle of semantic evolvement, with the progress of times many initially neuter words when are used on females usually become derogative words.thenceforth, it gradually evolves into a hypocoristic form, specifically refer to female

32、. in succession it generally refers to beauty that all man wants to go after. at last it becomes the substitute of prostitute. this semantic changing progress very much afford for thought, and its specific changing procedure can be generalized as bellow: tart a piece of pastry a term of endearment a

33、 sexually desirable woman a immoral woman a prostitute . at last, we can see that a word usually has the different denotative meanings when it was used to refer the different gender. it often derogates women and while to the males part, it always shows understanding, tolerant and no hypercriticism.

34、the three parts above sum up to centralize on one point: in social life the prevalent thoughts of male chauvinism trying to push a “double criterion” through all kinds of discourse modes embody the crackdown and discrimination of power politics to weak community. 3.3 “sex role” in communitythe conce

35、pt of “sex role” also improves sexism in the english language. sociolinguists understandings to this concept are often related to the “labor division theory” since 20c 50s popular in sociology of west countries. according to this theory, the mans social value is decided by his actual ability, which

36、has typically characteristic of instrumentality; the womans social value is decided by her well social ability, which has typically characteristics of emotionality. since 20c 70s, role theory as a dynamic research method has been broadly used on every parts of sexual research. thus it can be seen th

37、at according to the interpretation of traditional concept, female only can play functional role of good wife and good mother in society; language as the direct reflection of history and social life surely has maintained many conventional sayings reflecting the “sex role” of inner community. a lot of

38、 words connected with women are just to show the minor social roles, or have stigmatizing meanings which are different to the fate of semantic degradation or semantic derogation. for example, on derivation, the word “hussy” originally is from old english “hussif” which means “housewife”. initially,

39、“hussy” and “hussif” are the doublets, which can be interchanged in some context used to refer housekeeper and housewife. at the beginning hussy means female head of the house; later gradually has semantic derogation referring to a rustic, rude woman; in succession become a contemptuous word having

40、an opprobrious epithet for the woman in general; finally it becomes substitute of a lewd, brazen woman or a prostitute. all this is related to the thought stereotype that housewives as family members have lower status in english and american culture and they are easy to suffer force invasion.3.4 res

41、ults of theory of social identitytheory of social identity thinks that members in different race group are very interested in improving the social values of their groups. that is because society favoring to one group help to add self-esteem of the group members. many demonstrations show that once in

42、volving into the race movement and group conflicts, language not simply show the function of communication, but usually evolve into a strong mark symbol transmitting message of social identity and culture privilege, thus it gets social meaning. sociolinguists penelope eckert and mcconnell-ginet clea

43、rly point that: “language form is not always embodying content of semantic meaning by a constant method, but it is endowed with new semantic meaning through social practice.” the usage of “man” refers both male and female and the rule of third pronoun “he” s generally reference not only violate the

44、basic restriction of logic and wording to epicene man and generic pronoun, and also omit the specific requirement of context to the two language forms. in this condition, according to the sociolinguist theory, these two language forms not only show the pure language communicating function, but indicate a social meaning of man-chauvinism culture privileg