浅析英语中的性别歧视现象.docx

浅析英语中的性别歧视现象

　　[Abstract] Language plays an important role in society. As a phenomenon of society, language reflects all the sides of human society naturally. Sexism is a phenomenon 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 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 and essence of sexism in society. Then the thesis analyses sexism in terms of the generic masculine, word order and semantic derogation of women in greater detail. Finally, a large part of the thesis is contributed to how to change sexism in English. The author of the thesis thinks the key to the problem is: (1) solve the problem of generic pronouns; (2) neutralize lexis; (3) strive for balanced naming and addressing system; (4) coin new corresponding words. The elimination of linguistic sexism lies in social change. Only by changing the social structure, that is, women and men own really equal status, can language equality be truly achieved.
[Key Words] sexism; English language; lexical neutralization; feminism

[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的各种社会观念。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。
论文首先剖析了英语中性别歧视现象形成的根源。从本质来说，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是这种语言中的性别歧视现象与社会中的性别歧视的本质的关系。接着论文从阳性词泛指，词序，词义的贬降等方面对英语中的性别歧视现象进行了详细的分析。最后论文还着力探讨如何改变这种歧视。作者认为，改变性别歧视主要解决以下几个问题：(1) 避免阳性代词的泛指；(2) 词汇的中性化；(3)命名与称谓的对等；(4)创造新的对应词。语言中的性别歧视的最终消亡取决于社会变化。只有改变社会结构，即男女真正拥有平等的地位，语言中的平等才能真正实现。消除语言中的性别歧视的根本在于实现男女的平等的社会变革。
[关键词] 性别歧视；英语语言；词汇中性化；女权主义
1. Introduction
As the peculiar result of the development of human society, language is a kind of social phenomenon and reflects all the sides of human society naturally. Its existence and development are closely linked with the social attitudes of human beings and to a great extent are affected by their social views and values. Historically and sociologically, our society is man-oriented and man-centered. Women, regarded as a weaker gender in society, are discriminated for a long time and completely subordinated in political life, economic life and even family life in the society dominated by men. Unavoidably, this kind of phenomenon has been embodied in languages. In linguistic aspect, language is bias-based and women suffer from language sexism. Gender-differentiated language use can reflect and help perpetuate the subordinate status of women in society.
Since 1960s, feminists strive for the elimination of gender discrimination, for the greater recognition of women’s contributions to society and aim to change many cultural and social customs that perpetuate patriarchal value systems. Many fields of life around the world have been, or are being, affected by this movement. One of the many impacts feminism on society is its impact on language. Language was and is seen by many feminists as a powerful instrument of patriarchy.

2. The Factors of Sexism in the English Language
Sexism in English is not formed in one day, but built up in the long period of the development of language, which leads to the variety of the causes. What causes the sexism in the English Language? There are four factors: cultural factor, physiological factor, social factor and psychological factor.
(1) Cultural factor
In the Holy Bible (The Books of The Old Testament): “So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.’ ” [1]
Man came to the world first while woman made from one of man’s ribs was created just as a help meet for him. And she was not created until all other animals failed to meet the satisfaction of the man. From the order of the birth, it is obvious to see the different importance of man and woman. And man and woman are not equal at all because woman is only a part of man, which itself is the discrimination against women. It is said in the Holy Bible that the first sin is also committed by the woman. She was seduced by the snake into eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and having the man eat, too. At last, the woman was punished to bring forth children in pain and was ruled over by the man. From above, the superiority of men and inferiority of women is clearly seen. The Holy Bible is actually a book of men. As Christianity is such a powerful religion in Western countries, it is unreasonable to deny that this helps to set and consolidate the inferiority of women.
(2) Physiological factor
For extended work and life together, people realized that men are tall in stature, strong in muscle and robust in physique. In contrary to men, women are small in stature, weak in physique and have more fat and less muscle than men. Women also mature more rapidly.　In a word, men are stronger than women. This determines that men play a more and more important role in social and economic lives. A man’s job is to work outside but a woman’s job is to stay at home, do the housework and take care of the children. Women are treated as the weaker ones and they realize their own values through their marriages to men. At last, women are lower in status. They have to leech on to men and are dominated by men. Gradually, people begin to discriminate women and think that they are inferior in intelligence. This wrong perspective forms slowly and reflects in language.
(3) Social factor (Labor division)
Feminists all claim that we live in a patriarchal society: a society of men, ruled by men and for men. Patriarchy depicts men as the perfect norm against which women are measured and found lacking.
Both the Western and Eastern societies use sex, to one degree or another, in allocating tasks, activities, rights, and responsibilities. As for the job done by men and women, there is a long-stereotyped notion of what they can do. In history, there has been a division of labor--a division in which women’s place was restrained at home for housework and child-care while men worked outside being the breadwinner. At last, men had dominance over women, and women had to be dependent on men. This was the turning point for women. From then on, in paternal society, slavery society and capitalist society, women had been on the bottom of society. In long and endless course of history, sexism against women has been accumulated. It is due to different labor division that leads to different social status. This has been clear in ancient and modern society. Later, in addition to domestic work, women began to enter the paid work place. However, even though half of women are employed outside the home, the belief persists that woman is mainly, and primarily, in the roles of wife and mother.
Due to women‘s relative physical weakness and lower educational background, they do primarily the low-status, low-paying jobs. Although men also have family roles, they are defined primarily by their economic or occupational position. Thus the sexism in the society has been in existence, the embodiment of which is necessarily the sexism of language.
(4) Psychological factor
Because of the social and cultural factors, women are always considered to be the weak. People treat women as inferior to men. They educate men to be manly, decisive, and brave while women are required to be polite, conservative, obedient, and gentle. Because women are in subordinate status in the society, they have to constrain their emotion and give up their own need to meet the satisfaction of men. As time passes, when speaking women pay more attention to the elegance and standard of language than men. They use more pleasant and polite words in the hope that they can receive other’s approval. And they are taught to speak softly, to avoid contradicting others, to be obedient in communication, and to be aware of giving cues of strong confidence. They mould themselves to be inferior in their potential sub consciousness. Therefore, women try their best to strengthen their social status through their speech than men do. The lower women’s position is, the more polite they are in the face of others. And the standard language they use can show their submission and politeness. This also suggests that women are in a lower position in the society.

3. Phenomena of sexism in the English language
The generic masculine
Sexism in language in general comes in three major forms: language ignores women; it defines women as less significant than men; and it completely opposes women. They can be located in the generic masculine terms.
Generic pronouns
Generic pronouns are pronouns that are said to refer, with equal likelihood, to women and men. But the English language ignores women by allowing masculine terms to be used specifically to refer to males and commonly to refer to human beings in general. The generic pronoun “he” is perhaps the most well known example of the gender-specific of sexist language, and is frequently referred to be “he/man” language. The most significant manifestation of the sexism is in the use of generic masculine pronouns “he” and its variants his”, “him” and “himself” in such sentences as:
(1)He who laughs last laughs best.
(2)Everyone must do his homework well.
(3)If anyone calls, tell him I will be back later.
(4)Everyone should learn to solve problems himself.
In the above examples, “he”, “his”, “him” and “himself” are used not sex-specifically, but generically, that is, although the pronouns refer grammatically to the single male citizen, they should be taken to refer to both male and female citizens in general. On the formal occasions, ‘he’, ‘him’ or ‘his’ can be used to refer to such indefinite pronouns as each, everyone, everybody, no one, someone, anyone and so on. While ‘she’, ‘her’, ‘herself’ don’t have such usages.
Generic nouns
Another well-known example of generic masculine terms is “man”. The definitions of “man” in Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary (Extended fourth edition) are as follows: ① adult male human being; ② human being of either sex; person ③ [sing](without the or a) the human race; mankind. There are some examples taken from the dictionary. ① All men must die. ②Growing old is something a man has to accept. ③Man is mortal.　From these definitions and examples, it is easy to see that “man”, and “men” can be used generically to refer to both male and female. But ‘woman’ and ‘women’ cannot be employed in reference to men.
This also reminds people of the famous saying from the US Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal.” Should people argue that the “men” does not include women because women were not given the right to vote in the eighteenth century America?　A clear explanation of this phenomenon may be found in sentence like:
(1) Man is a social animal.
(2) Men remake nature.
When seeing the three sentences, speakers of English are able to readily interpret “man” and “men” as meaning “the human race”; “humankind”. If not, the two sentences could be changed into
(3) Woman is a social animal.
(4) Women remake nature.
Of course, they are grammatically well formed; semantically, however, the third sentence has the defect of being partial, and the fourth sentence is very ridiculous.
From above, one can know that in English using “man” or “men” to indicate “the human race”, neglects the fact that men and women are equal in the society. By contraries, they treat man as the center of society, an embodiment of criterion and totally ignore the existence of woman. There are many other generic masculine terms such as man-to-man, prehistoric man, brotherhood, chairman, and policeman.

Women being attached to men
The English language distinguishes women’s courtesy titles on the basis of marital status, but not those of men. There is only one form of address for men, Mr., regardless of martial status. However, the martial status of women is distinguished by Miss and Mrs., reflecting the notion that whether or not a woman is in a marriage. This discriminatory practice is said to mark the availability of women in terms of marriage (sex) and reinforces the view that a woman is the property of a man (either her father or her husband). When a woman has been married, people address her as “Mrs. plus her husband’s surname”. That is to say, if a woman is married to somebody, she has no right to be treated like an unmarried lady. As to a man, that’s a different matter. For example: In English-speaking countries, you can often hear someone call the wife of John Smith “Mrs. John Smith”. There is no exception of famous Madame Curie, Mrs. Thatcher, and Mrs. Gandhi. Mrs. Thatcher is the former Prime Minister in UK. However, few people know her own family names. Mr. Clinton’s wife, Hilary Clinton, as a liberated woman, kept her name Hilary Rodham after marriage. But in order to help her husband in the election, she had to change her name. From the address of men and women, one can clearly see the submissive position of women and women are merely an extension of their husbands or part of their husbands’ estate. This also reflects in the language.
Female as an exception
English itself has no difference of gender. But in this man-centered society, people is used to believing that prestige person are always males However, a woman who once receives great popularity is regarded as a special exception.
Many professionals such as doctor, professor, engineer, lawyer, pilot, judge, surgeon can be used to indicate both males and females. But when indicating female’s position, professional, etc., these words are created by adding a bound morpheme or by combining them with a word referring to female. Because these satisfactory jobs are traditionally viewed as ones qualified only by males. Women are just the appendant to men. The words below can best illustrate it:
Common gender Masculine gender Feminine gender
waiter waiter waitress
hero hero heroine
pilot pilot woman pilot
doctor doctor woman doctor
surgeon surgeon female surgeon
lawyer lawyer lady lawyer
Interestingly, when we hear other people say “ My cousin is a lawyer.”, most people always conclude that my cousin is a male. Most of the time, whenever we refer to a woman, we have to elaborately add woman, female or lady before many professionals.
But other professionals like secretary, nurse, typist, receptionist, dressmaker, are often used to indicate females. When they are used to refer to males, you should add male or man before