标签：英语论文范文,毕业论文范文,毕业论文格式,
浅析英语中的性别歧视现象,http://www.dxs89.com
3. Phenomena of sexism in the English language3.1 The generic masculineSexism in language in general comes in three major forms:
language ignores women; it defines women as less significantthan men; and it completely opposes women. They can be locatedin the generic masculine terms.
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3.1.1 Generic pronounsGeneric pronouns are pronouns that are said to refer, withequal likelihood, to women and men. But the English languageignores women by allowing masculine terms to be usedspecifically to refer to males and commonly to refer to humanbeings in general. The generic pronoun “he” is perhaps themost well known example of the gender-specific of sexistlanguage, and is frequently referred to be “he/man” language.
The most significant manifestation of the sexism is in the useof 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” areused not sex-specifically, but generically, that is, althoughthe pronouns refer grammatically to the single male citizen,they should be taken to refer to both male and female citizensin general. On the formal occasions, ‘he’, ‘him’ or ‘his’ canbe 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.
3.1.2 Generic nounsAnother well-known example of generic masculine terms is“man”. The definitions of “man” in Oxford Advanced Learner’sEnglish-Chinese Dictionary (Extended fourth edition) are asfollows: ① adult male human being; ② human being of eithersex; person ③ [sing](without the or a) the human race;mankind. There are some examples taken from the dictionary. ①All men must die. ②Growing old is something a man has toaccept. ③Man is mortal. [4] From these definitions andexamples, it is easy to see that “man”, and “men” can be usedgenerically to refer to both male and female. But ‘woman’ and‘women’ cannot be employed in reference to men.
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This also reminds people of the famous saying from the USDeclaration of Independence: “All men are created equal.”
Should people argue that the “men” does not include womenbecause women were not given the right to vote in theeighteenth century America? [5] A clear explanation of thisphenomenon 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 ableto readily interpret “man” and “men” as meaning “the humanrace”; “humankind”. If not, the two sentences could be changedinto(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 andwomen are equal in the society. By contraries, they treat manas the center of society, an embodiment of criterion andtotally ignore the existence of woman.[6] There are many othergeneric masculine terms such as man-to-man, prehistoric man,brotherhood, chairman, and policeman.
3.1.3 Women being attached to menThe English language distinguishes women’s courtesy titles onthe basis of marital status, but not those of men. There isonly one form of address for men, Mr., regardless of martialstatus. However, the martial status of women is distinguishedby Miss and Mrs., reflecting the notion that whether or not awoman is in a marriage. This discriminatory practice is saidto 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 beenmarried, people address her as “Mrs. plus her husband’ssurname”. That is to say, if a woman is married to somebody,she has no right to be treated like an unmarried lady. As to aman, that’s a different matter. For example: InEnglish-speaking countries, you can often hear someone callthe wife of John Smith “Mrs. John Smith”. There is noexception of famous Madame Curie, Mrs. Thatcher, and Mrs.
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Gandhi.[7] Mrs. Thatcher is the former Prime Minister in UK.
However, few people know her own family names.[8] Mr.
Clinton’s wife, Hilary Clinton, as a liberated woman, kept hername Hilary Rodham after marriage. But in order to help herhusband in the election, she had to change her name. From theaddress of men and women, one can clearly see the submissiveposition of women and women are merely an extension of theirhusbands or part of their husbands’ estate. This also reflectsin the language.
3.1.4 Female as an exceptionEnglish itself has no difference of gender. But in thisman-centered society, people is used to believing thatprestige person are always males. However, a woman who oncereceives great popularity is regarded as a special exception.
Many professionals such as doctor, professor, engineer,lawyer, pilot, judge, surgeon can be used to indicate bothmales and females. But when indicating female’s position,professional, etc., these words are created by adding a boundmorpheme or by combining them with a word referring tofemale.[9] Because these satisfactory jobs are traditionallyviewed as ones qualified only by males. Women are just theappendant to men. The words below can best illustrate it:
Common gender Masculine gender Femininegenderwaiter waiter waitresshero hero heroinepilot pilot woman pilotdoctor doctor woman doctorsurgeon surgeon femalesurgeonlawyer lawyer lady lawyerInterestingly, when we hear other people say “ My cousin is alawyer.”, most people always conclude that my cousin is amale. Most of the time, whenever we refer to a woman, we haveto elaborately add woman, female or lady before manyprofessionals.
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，浅析英语中的性别歧视现象