社会语言学论文

社 会 班级：语 言 学 导 论 课程论文

2010级英语（师范）14班

姓名：

Research on the Sexism in English Language

Introduction:

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 exists in our daily life, and it reflected through language.

I know Jesperson, a philologian in Denmark said English is the most masculine language. Just like in English the words that are used by men are usually unmarked while women are marked. This is the most obvious phenomenon of sexism in English. Such as “doctor” and “woman doctor”; “chairman” and “female chairman”.

There are no special words for some status occupation of women. They can only come from adding suffix after masculine form. In English vocabulary, there are some suffixes used to indicate women, such as - - ess, - ix, - n, - ine, - enne, - trix, etc. Such as “actor” and “actress” “prince” and “princess” and so on.

When the words showing the two genders appear at the same time, we can find generally it's man first woman second. e.g.: king and queen, father and mother, boys and girls, Mr. and Mrs.

Some verbs show the sexism too, such as “A man of straw is worth of a woman of gold”. And then some words like “history” mean that man’s story is history. That is so unfair to women.

When people mention someone, he or she also put man in the first, such as: king and queen, brother and sister, father and mother, boys and girls, husband and wife, Adam and Eve, man and woman.

The third person pronoun “he” not only refers to male, but also refers whole human beings. It’s a rule in English, everybody knows it.

Reasons:

Sexism can date back to the Bible. According to the Bible, the God made Adam by soil, Eve is derived from one of Adam’s ribs, so Adam said“This is a piece of new bone in my bones, the flesh separating form mine: as she was taken from men ,so she was called women.” Besides, the people who came up with the language are traditionally male dominated societies. \-centered theory\and \superiority\

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. And there was an unwritten

code that women’s place was restrained at home for housework and children-care while men worked outside as the breadwinners. That's the traditional role of men and women because of the patriarchal society. This wrong perspective forms slowly and reflects in language. Today, although some women are in higher positions in certain fields, but compared with men, there are still gaps. Men had dominance over women, and women had to be dependent on men. Then paternal society had lasted for a long time, in which women were on the bottom of society.

And at the same time, as women are always full of the “Mother love”, they pay more attention to the children and family, they thought raise their children and support their husband are the nature. So they use more pleasant and polite words in the hope that they can receive others’ approval. Yet, men do always show their strong images with piercing words. Therefore, it suggests that women are in a lower position in society. However, even though nowadays more and more women prefer to balance their work and family, they are still supposed to stay to play the role as a wife and a mother.

Conclusion

Equality of the sexes has been regarded as an important symbol of modernization and human civilization. In the world, there have been existing two different genders——male and female. On account of the differences between their physiological features and the superiority and inferiority in social activities, men and women are differentiated from each other in individuality, value, image and status, which give rise to variations in their language styles and language uses.

Through analyzing sexism in English language we get more understanding of English history, social environment and literature. And the more important is that find out the reasons. Sexism is a fact. It faithfully reflects in the language, and it is the entire history and social activities in miniature. As a part of social phenomenon, language has a long story, and would like to eliminate this inequality in the short term is impossible. But fortunately, the western feminist movement over the past century has had a positive impact. They advocate using the gender -neutral term to replace the obvious sexism in vocabularies, and these efforts achieved great results. If we want to find the equality about men and women, it still has a long way to go. Gradually, various factors lead to cause sexism in language; sexism in language reflects sexism in society. We should know about the sexism well from our daily life, we need to pay more attention to the phenomenon of gender difference and sexism in English language, and try our best to eliminate the sexism phenomenon. Therefore, in order to raise women’s social status, we need to adopt varieties of methods to eliminate sexism in language. As the women’s liberation movement in vigorous, we also believe that women’s status would rise. Therefore, sexism in language would be less and less.

References:

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