论文总字数：34708字

摘 要

性别歧视，一般来说，是指一对个性别的偏见，而且主要是指对妇女的歧视。这种歧视存在于我们社会生活的方方面面。在社会的发展过程中，一直是由男性主宰着世界。语言作为沟通的一种手段，真正体现了人类的独特性。虽然语言不能决定人们的思维，它确实可以影响人们的世界观。性别歧视也反映了在男性主宰的社会中妇女对男性的依赖。

上个世纪六十年代，英语中的性别歧视现象成了语言研究者们探究的热点领域。直到今天，它仍然吸引着大批语言学习者去大量研究这一领域。本文聚焦于英语中句法，词汇以及谚语中存在的性别歧视现象旨在深入研究英语中的性别歧视。此外，该文还从历史，社会，文化的角度探讨了性别歧视的起因，同时还提出了消除这种性别歧视的一些基本策略。

为了更好地与英语国家的人们进行交流并完善英语这门语言，本文旨在提醒我们要避免使用带有性别歧视的语言。只有这样，我们才能实现男性和女性在语言上的平等。

关键词：性别歧视；对女性的歧视；英语语言

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

3. Phenomena of Gender Discrimination in English Language 4

3.1 Sexism in Proverbs 4

3.2 Sexism in Vocabulary 5

3.3 Sexism in Syntax 5

4. Causes of Gender Discrimination in English Language 6

4.1 Living Environment 6

4.2 Cultural Factors 8

4.3 Social Factors 10

5. Feasibilities of Reducing Linguistic Sexism 11

6. Conclusion 13

Works Cited 14

1. Introduction

Language, as a complicated and emotional social phenomenon, is the most important tool for human beings to communicate and think .It can also reflect and convey thoughts, attitudes of people who have developed and used it for thousands of years. People use language to communicate ideas and formulate thoughts .Language tends to reflect social reality and is subjected to the restrictions of people’s living habits, thinking patterns, behavior norms, moral values, political concepts and cultural traditions. Consequently, it is considered as the existing form of thinking, even more ,as “the identity card” of thinking.

In ancient society, people lived on hunting and fieldwork. The labor-demanding farm work gradually made male members the leading force of the society. Naturally, men gained prominence in the families, thus bestowed with a dominant position in the families and the society at large. Ever since then, human society has entered an era marked with patriarchal dominance. This patriarchal society is based on the belief that the male is the superior sex while female is the inferior sex and many of the social institutions and much social practice are then organized in language to reflect the belief.

Over the past decades, linguists have long been pursing research on the hot issue of sexism in language. As is known in the linguistic circle, sexism is influenced by such factors as gender roles and cultural components. Nowadays since different cultures and languages are often mixed, the communication can undoubtedly be very complicated and difficult。As a result, scholars in this filed have long been intrigued by the issues. Recently, anthropologists and sociolinguists have carried out much research in this field. The results of this kind of research can help us to have a better understanding about the sexist phenomena in different cultures, which will not only benefit the communication but also promote the harmonious language. By making references to some outcomes of the previous studies in this particular subject, this thesis endeavors to explore some feasible and workable ways of eliminating sexism in the use of the English language.

2. Literature Review

The study on language and gender has gone through a long history in western countries. Since the late 1960s and early 1970s when the second wave of the feminist movement started mainly in western English speaking countries, people have been paying attention to the relationship between language and gender. Sociolinguistics also sprang up in the 1960s. Therefore, concern with the representation of women was the characteristics of the works in this period. Lakoff put out the term “women’ language” in 1970 and published Language and Women’s Place in 1975, which is the only work that had direct linguistic impact on the systematic study on language and gender. In the book, he pointed out that in the world of language, men were in the dominated position while the images of women were incomplete, and men’s language constituted the norm but women were prejudiced against in English. His work has drawn the interest of many other linguists in the field of language and gender research. The Semantic Derogation (1975) and The Feminist Critique of Language (1975) by M. Schulz and Aspects of Language (1968) and The Loaded Weapon (1980) by D. Bolinger all belong to the early works of sexism in language. They yield to the same conclusion: language is sexist. Otto Jespersen, the Danish linguist, states that English is the most masculine language as far as he is concerned, in his Growth and Structure of the English Language (1922).

During the second wave of the feminist movement, women in the western world began to fight for their rights. So the researchers in the west got down to the studies on language and gender. Thorne and Henley(1975) held the view that the women’s liberation movement pushed the studies in gender-language field into prominence, and it had great influence on their legitimization and acceptance. From then on, more and more linguists and language researchers began to pay attention to sexism in English. It was widely realized that the English language deprecated and ignored women and made them in lower status in society. The most influential theoretical framework in the field was based on emphasizing men’s dominance. Many studies focused on the discrimination against women reflected in English, and the devastating social consequences of the English language. In many feminists" view, language was and is one of the most powerful instruments of patriarchy. According to Dale Spender (1980), author of Man-Made Language, “the English language is a man-made language and performs as an important contributor to women “oppression”. The linguists went on to make deeper studies on the gender-language issue from the late 1980s to 1990s. Mary Rithchie Key, in her Male/Female language (1996) gives us a detailed description on the gender difference in language, the evolution of gender language, as well as the social and cultural factors on gender language. The 44th International Linguistics Association, held in New York, in 1999, took “language and gender” as the theme topic of the conference. This indicates that “gender-language” has been considered as an important field in linguistics by linguists. The researches in this field involve pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, semantics, dialects, multilingual environment, language acquisition, verbal ability, paralanguage, so on and so forth. The researches of this topic in this period can be thought to be systematic. The studies on sexism in language undertaken by feminist scholars derive from the following primary assumptions. “1) Language concerns the portrayal of men as the norm and women as the appendage. 2) The derogation of women’s agent nouns and the commendation of men’s agent nouns. 3) Words denoting male sex are put in front of female sex such as husband and wife, son and daughter and so on.” (Wang Dechun，Sun Nvjian and Yao Yuan，1992）

Influenced by the research in the West, Chinese linguists began to explore the gender-language issue from the 1980s. Many researches put forward relative research topics in this field, for example, Chen Yuan (1983) and Chen Songcen (1985) both mentioned the concept “gender-language”. Zhun Wanjin, in his Overview of Sociolinguistics (1992), makes a profound exploration in the gender-language issue, from the respects of “the finding of difference”, “sexism in English”, “female linguistic style”, “reasons for the difference”. Shen Xiaolong(1996) gives a detailed introduction of some hypothesis by Western researchers based on their study of reasons for gender difference. Jia Yuxin, in his Intercultural Communication (2004), systematically analyses how male and female should communicate successfully by using language in communication and combines theories in this field with practical methods. Zhu Wenjun (2000), makes a detailed description and analysis on sexism in language, form the respects of “the domineer of men”, “the damaged women”, “the consciousness and symbol of gender”, and “the tendency of feminist movement and gender-language”. At the same time, some overview articles began to appear on the academic periodicals and there also appeared some studies of researchers based on the materials they got during their study and survey aboard. Of them，the most influential are as follows: “A review of research on language and gender” by Dai Weidong (1983), “A review of research on female pronunciation and intonation of English” by Yang Yonglin(1993), “Gender prototype and its reflection in communication of both genders” by Song Guoyan (1998), “On the construction of gender identity in English advertisement” by Liang Lujin (2003), “A review of research on gender difference in English” by Wang Zhenjing (2002) etc..

Till now, there are not many academic books on the gender-language issue. Sun Rujian (1997) published his Language and Gender in 1997, which explores the gender-language issue from the perspective of social psychology. In The Cultural and Pragmatic Study of Gender -Language Bai Jiehong (2000) makes a detailed analysis of gender difference in English from the perspective of pragmatics, sociolinguistics, semantics as well as other relative subjects.

After reviewing all these previous studies on this topic, the author found that they mainly focused on the samples and the causes of gender discrimination. Few of them concern what we can do to solve the problem. This paper also discusses some basic strategies to remove gender discrimination in English.

3. Phenomena of Gender Discrimination in English Language

3.1 Sexism in Proverbs

Proverbs are short sayings handed down from generation to generation. They are not only mirrors of a nation but also living fossils of a language. As a result, the study has gained more and more attention of social scientists, like sociologists, anthropologists and sociolinguists. Proverbs are generally considered to reveal a nation’s moral or ethical principles. The following English proverbs, which are actually mirrors of social discrimination against women universally, have been embraced and used by many people. Shakespeare said in his famous “Hamlet”:“Frailty, the name is woman.”(弱者，你的名字是女人). Other English proverbs showing women are inferior are: A man of straw is worth a woman of gold(稻草男儿抵得金玉女子). Man, woman and devil are the three degrees of comparison.(男人，妇女和魔鬼，三级差别分贱类).

The cause of the misfortune can be also found in women: Sometimes, women’s beauty ruins their life. Women are said to be the cause of misfortune. In English, since the time of Adam and Eve, women have been said to bring about sin into the world. So women are regarded as evil. Such proverbs are:Women are the devil’s net. (女人是魔鬼织的网)；Women are the snares of Satan.（女人是撒旦设下的陷阱）；No war is without a woman. (夫成城，妇倾城).

3.2 Sexism in Vocabulary

In English, masculine nouns are usually unmarked but some feminine nouns are marked, e,g, the suffix –ess is used to mark some female nouns, like actress, princess, heiress. Probably, the reason for this can be attributed to the belief that when God created human beings, he first created a man named Adam, followed by his making of a woman Eve with one rib from Adam. Therefore, it has been speculated that when talking about the creation of English writing, the same order was followed subconsciously. In case it is impossible to add English suffixes to form other feminine nouns, the previous creators opted to a feminist noun in front of the other nouns which serves as a mark. There is little wonder that when a man assumes the post of a “doctors” or “president”, people can naturally refer to him as “doctor” or “judge”. Nevertheless, when it happens to a female, people tend to address her with a gender word added in front of the occupation, calling her a “woman doctor” or a “woman president”.

3.3 Sexism in Syntax

A sex-biased discrimination against women is also manifested in the word order in English. When men and women are mentioned at the same time , it is the usual practice that men are given precedence and listed before women. Maybe it was more natural to place man before woman, such as male and female, husband and wife, brother and sister; son and daughter. Some linguists consider that people are used to following a “good to bad” order when arranging words, such as “good-bad”, “big-small”“light-dark”,.“day-night”,“rich-poor”, The arrangement of “man-woman” also follows the same rule.It implies that men are better than women. Even if this assumption may sound too extreme, it reminds us of the possible negative influences of the word order on people’s thinking.,for example ,when we address people in English,we usually say man and woman, male and female,father and mother,husband and wife, boy and girl, , brother and sister rather than woman and man,female and male ,mother and father,wife and husband,girl and boy ,sister and brother.

4. Causes of Gender Discrimination in English Language

4.1 Living Environment

The sexual inequality is rooted within the society itself. Family constitutes the basic unit of society and each home exists as a state in miniature. Discrimination against women is deeply rooted in the structure of society----in the rules that women abide by, and in the sexual division of labor which has long restricted females mainly to the doing of house chores. Thus, the patriarchal family becomes the cornerstone----the basic social unit.^[3]

In human history, during the primitive era mainly featuring hunting life, its tradition has also affected the roles of men and women. In primitive society women had the task of gathering the vegetable and fruit while men had the task of gathering the meat. Compared with hunting, gathering was easier. Very often the hunters would return home with nothing, while women would certainly brought home some vegetables and fruits for diet. Besides, women had the major responsibility to bear and rear children, which maintained the extending of the society. Therefore, in gathering-hunting time, women played a more important role in the productivity.^[4]

However, with the discovery of the cause-effect relationship between seed planting and harvest, and the invention of the plow, eventually the hunting society yielded to the agricultural society.^[5] Since the farm work was usually physically demanding and required tremendous endurance, it was usually men who gradually took leading roles in the food production process. Typically, women’s farm work was only that of a helpmate. Women became increasingly dependent upon men although they still played important roles in child bearing and rearing and in food preparation. So, their dependency increased, and their status decreased. One of the new features in agricultural society was the need to possess a given land^[6]. The land was usually in the possession of the eldest male, the patriarch, and it would be naturally handed down to his eldest son. Women were robbed of land and property, and then had to be dependent on men for food and shelter. In addition, women were not entitled to any political rights and were completely deprived of the social and political life. It then became a tradition that men work outside maintaining prime responsibility for the economic survival of the household while women stay home doing ‘trivial’ housework. Eventually, with technology expanded, industrial society evolved. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries brought the challenge of industrialization, which had profound impact on men’s roles. Until the nineteenth century, work and home life were one; the family functioned as a center for economic production as well as the primary source for meeting its members’ needs. For most people, work and home, family members and work colleagues, and daily life were in the same place----the family household^[7]. During that time, due to the fact that more new-born babies survived the harsh living conditions and men had increased their awareness of the importance of child-bearing, more emphasis was put on the gender roles of men as the breadwinners and women as the mothers/housewives. With the rising population, more and more people became land-less, and therefore, the working-class businessman became the new hunter. As the human society entered the era of industrialization, there have been new shifts in job divisions and family roles of both gender res and the private patriarchal within the family had been shifted to public patriarchy centered in industry and government.^[8]

As men’s private property, women’s status was very low. As the society’s natural and necessary institution, the family has defined women’s function as sexual, procreative, and child-rearing machine. Girls were less valued than boys; women were unable to inherit and therefore did not become owners of the land. Such, very generally, was woman’s place in the traditional family and society.^[9]

Similarly, modern family is a sociological phenomenon, which, according to some anthropologists, is a consequence of cultural changes that is based upon equality. The custom of women working primarily as homemakers is rapidly changing also in our society, with women being employed outside the home outnumber full-time homemakers. Such a phenomenon is seen as a response to such cultural changes as the smaller families, the higher economic pressures and high costs of raising and educating children. It can also be attributed to such factors as the advents and applications of such laborsaving devices as machines and convenience foods, the raising of self-consciousness of women, as well as a reflection of the change in male-female relationships. Nevertheless, most people still believe that the husband’s career is primary and the wife’s career is secondary to the needs of the family and to the husband’s career decisions. In modern marriage, the male is still dominant but not as strong as in the past.^[10] Regarding the job divisions, the spouses might share domestic chores, or the different jobs could be done with them taking their turns, or job divisions based on their skills and interest. However, no matter who does what, in the most of the families, the wife still carries the responsibility for domestic tasks and man invests in his career. The wife’s primary role is to care for the home and children while the husband’s primary role is still that of breadwinner. Whenever possible, his wives would not embark on the tasks outside their homes, which can probably be explained by the fact that this would reflect negatively on her husband and would harm their primary work as wives and mothers.^[11] When they do work outside,, that might have been purely been necessitated by the family’s financial needs, which might be considered as a stopgap measure instead of a career.

Both traditional family and modern family as we have described are rooted in the hierarchical society. A pattern where fathers arrange marriages and pass control of their daughters over to the complete authority of their husbands, where wives are defined in their homes.

4.2 Cultural Factors

Human language, as a social and cultural phenomenon, is bound to be heavily influenced by the various cultural factors of a society. Traditionally, in quite a few types of society, woman has been regarded as a source of danger, as a representative of evil, and such an adverse image has run through patriarchic history and been inherited by the numerous generations of the male-dominated societies . Since she is depicted as the source of sin and evil, her subjection is seen as her justified desert. From the very beginning of Greek literature, a strong discrimination against women is obvious. From the heroic to the classical age, the status of women was not improved, and this was especially true of classical Athens^[12]. Even in the classical Greek literature, the narrowly defined function of women could be found, which defined women as children bearers and housekeepers. Marriage to a woman was primarily for a economic consideration; girls usually lacked a good education: they were only taught the arts of homemaking; While men could go out and gather together for a discussion of civic and intellectual affairs, women were not supposed to go out and were deprived of access to all those places, such as the market place, the law courts, where philosophical issues were generally discussed. With the monogamous sexuality not being imposed on men, the worst possible crime a woman could commit was unfaithfulness to her husband. Even if her husband died, a woman had no control over her life or her body. According to Genesis, it is man that created the world and then named the world. Woman was created just as a helpmate for man. And she was not created until all other animals failed to meet the need of the man. The woman was made of a rib of the man and therefore she was destined to be the appendage of man. And the name woman, according to the Bible, simply means that “she was taken from men”. This myth manifests a fundamental attitude in man’s view of woman: they were limited to being their mates, just as Eve is for Adam, instead of taking up their own tasks of becoming individual women.^[13] From all these above the superiority of men and inferiority of women is clearly seen.

As depicted in the Bible, in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve saw that they were naked because they had eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And God asked:“Who told you that you were naked?” Eve said: “It’s a snake”. There is an inherent bias in interpreting Adam’s eating of the apple as a sign of his strength and superiority, and the woman Eve is branded as a dangerous irresistible temptress. She was the cause of his downfall and sin and all his miseries, so she Eve (and the female) is associated with evil. She (female) follows the pattern laid down by Eve. This views they express are still deeply embedded in the minds of human beings and had unseen and unrecognized forces to human thoughts in the west.^[14]

4.3 Social Factors

Since language is a social phenomenon, it has long been subjected to the influence of social factors. In the society, there exist different kinds of discrimination against women.As language reflects social reality, the author will trace linguistic sexism to social factors through the major aspect: education.

Historically, one universally true phenomenon is that the vast majority of women lived in ignorance and seclusion. Women had long been deprived of the access to education in history. Traditionally only a minority of families sent children to school. Education spending was regarded as an investment for the future, for an educated boy might get on in the world and in doing so increase his family’s prosperity. There was little incentive to make such sacrifices for girls who would leave their own families on marriage. The girl began to share the housework and baby-minding responsibilities at a very young age, while her brothers were allowed a much longe childhood. The boy went to school if he was fortunate, but girl rarely had such an opportunity. Young girl as a female would throughout her life be seen as less important and less valuable than a male. To make women accept their inferiority identity, the feudal rules tried every means to keep them ignorant. Women were excluded from education and were for the most part condemned to illiteracy. Their illiteracy rate reached over 90%.The whole training of a daughter by her family was aimed at fitting her to be a wife, mother and worker for another family. Of course, some rich families expected their daughters to acquire literacy in addition to such ladylike skills as household management, embroidery, and sewing. The situation was much the same in the most of the western countries. Women were simply regarded as being intellectually inferior and incapable of great thoughts. Custom did not permit girls to be educated, to work, or to have social activities. Women have traditionally been discouraged from studying the holy Bible or even learning Hebrew. Their only aspiration was marriage and family. A woman’s education comprised only those needleworks and dancing----traditionally deemed sufficient for a young woman to catch a husband, run a home and bring up children. A married woman could only darn socks, sew, cook, clean and take care of her man and her children. The account in Genesis of Eve’s tempting Adam with an apple and leading him into original sin was a constant reminder of their inferiority identity. Some “experts” even went so far as to argue that too much use of a woman’s brain would damage her reproductive organs and thus endanger her vital childbearing function. F. W. Nietzsche said, “When a woman inclines to learning, there is usually something wrong with her sex apparatus.” Dr Johnson said, “A man is better pleased when he has a good dinner on the table than when his wife talks Greek.” There was a great common pressure upon women to engage in intellectual pursuits. The schooling of the Christian girl generally went no further than teaching her to read so that she could know the scriptures. Beyond that, schooling was thought to be useless or even harmful to girls. Colonial American schools in 1700s did not provide education for girls in any significant way. Those illiterate American women in the 18th century even took their inferior identity for granted and believed that they were destined by nature to be the mother of the race and they would gladly accept the doctrine that “The Gods…have plainly adapted the nature of women for work and duties within doors, and that of man for work and duties without doors…”and “Home is, and ever will be, woman’s primal kingdom.”^[15]

5. Feasibilities of Reducing Linguistic Sexism

Language has been developed as a result of the previous developments. Meanwhile, it serves as the beginning of later development. And language, as a social phenomenon, usually reflects social reality. With the development of economy, politics, technology, science, education, and people’s ideology, the majority of positions originally exclusive to men, such as leadership positions, education positions, medicine-related positions, science-and-technology-related positions, are just as likely to be held by women as by men. So linguistic change are expected to happen. In addition, some legislative measures have made contributions to the creation and adoption of non-discriminatory terminology. For example, laws that deal with equality between sexes and equal employment opportunities have also impacted the use of job titles and occupational terms. In Britain,United States and China, with the feminist movements, and with the increasing equality, now there is a greater awareness that we have subtle distinctions in the vocabulary choice to describe men and women, and there is a frequent insistence that neutral words should be used as much as possible.

In recent decades, enormous endeavors have been made to overcome the sexist language use, and consequently, many new measures for counter-sexist-language,and new categorizations have been created and a large number of modifications have been put up for replacements of the old ones. Some have already been adopted. For instance, words like ‘Ms’ and ‘spokesperson’ have, under pressure of the women’s movement, become relatively common way of appellation. ‘He or she ’is also more and more used ; in casual English usage, many conservationists tend to select a plural pronoun to mean a pronoun or noun that is sex-indefinite. Reducing linguistic sexism is truly feasible, but it will be a long time before the new lexical items advocated have the universal acceptance. Also, both individuals and governments have carried out guidelines to sensitize language users about the issue of language and gender discrimination. They also offers them many alternatives to sexist language practice. Even more, they published many guidelines as booklets or brochures. Some of them have editorial statements to encourage their contributors to use non-sexist language. Some authors propose some techniques for removing sexist language either in prefaces or footnotes. There is little doubt that the development of language needs human promotion as well as processes and steps. Meanwhile, the adoption of the new terms does not necessarily mean the immediate demise of the old ones. But, the new should be popularized. Only under the favorable circumstances can the adoption be feasible. As long as women continue to gain prominence in commerce, profession , government, and higher education, the process is likely to be accelerated. Despite all the achievements that have been made during the past decades, there should be a universal social consciousness that the ultimate elimination of sexism in the linguistic world calls for more consistent and unyielding efforts in the future.

Conclusion

As the above refers to, language is the most important way of expressing thoughts. It also reflects the attitudes and the ideas of the people who develop it and use it. Language tends to reflect social reality and is subjected to the restrictions of people’s cultural traditions, behavior norms, living habits, moral values, political concepts and thinking patterns,. Language is considered as the existing form of thinking. Human beings, no matter what language they speak or no matter where they live, share a great deal of common features both in biological and cultural aspects. These common elements can be referred to as biological and cultural universals, which may further lead to linguistic universals.

This thesis has made some endeavors in the study of the linguistic practice --the gender discrimination in English language. It begins with the presenting of the phenomena of gender discrimination in English language in three areas, proverbs, vocabulary and syntax. Then the paper analyzes the causes of gender discrimination: living environment, cultural factors and social factors. Finally the article discusses some fundamental strategies to remove the gender discrimination in English.

This study has also reached a conclusion that eliminating of discrimination against women in English is unquestionable. Such a goal can be surely achieved as long as people have the strong awareness of avoiding the employment of gender-discrimination language in both speaking and writing. However, the thesis also points out that there is still a long way to go before total equality and impartiality can be achieved and sexist discrimination eliminated in the use of the English language.

Works Cited

[1] Bolinger Dwight. Language-The Language Weapon. Longman House:Longnan Group-Lt.1980.

[2] Lakoff, Robin. Language and Women’s Place. New York: Harper amp; Row Publishers, 1975.

[3] Jespersen, O. The Growth and Structure of the English Language. New York:Doubleday, 1938.

[4] Miller＆Swift. Words and Women, New Language in New Times. (updated).New York：Harper Collins, 1991.

[5]陈桦. 《词汇中性别歧视之探索》. 重庆：西南师范大学, 2005(02):4-6.

[6]陈原. 《社会语言学》.上海：学林出版社，1983.

[7]褚莱莱. 《浅析性别歧视现象在英语中的体》 妇女研究论丛 2004(02):23-24

[8]戴炜栋. 《言语性别差异分析综述》. 外国语,1983(06):39-42.

[9]代新黎. 《论英语中的性别歧视和规避策略》. 商丘学院学报，2005（06）:157-159.

[10]董银秀. 《英语词汇的搭配意义所影射的性别歧视》. 甘肃广播电视大学学报, 2006(3):102-105.

[11]任静生. 《再英语中的性歧视问题及对策》. 西安外国语学院学报, 2002(1).

[12]任静生. 《英语中的性歧视问题及其对策简析》. 合肥工业大学学报(社会科学版),

[13]吴岱容. 《英汉语言性别歧视的比较研究》. 上海：上海外国语大学, 2004.

[14]杨永林.《性别歧视在谚语中的表现》. 外语教学与研究, 1987(2):37-41.

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