论性别歧视及其影响_英文_

2009年第19期总第57期经济研究导刊

ECONOMIC RESEARCH GUIDE

No．19，2009Serial No．57

论性别歧视及其影响

黄书霞

（湖南工业大学外国语学院，湖南株洲412008）

摘要：语言被认为是人类社会发展的结晶，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的一种社会现象。而这一特定的社会现象必然会在语言中折射出来。阐释了性别歧视，深入剖析了英语及汉语中性别歧视产生的根源。接着论述女权运动对其产生的影响；最后，阐述了在语言中如何避免性别歧视。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。

关键词：性别歧视；英语语言；汉语语言中图分类号：D668

文献标志码：A

文章编号：1673-291X （2009）19-0218-03

I Introduction

Historically and sociologically, our society is man-oriented

and man-centered. Women, regarded as a weaker gender in soci-ety, 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-dif-ferentiated language use can reflect and help perpetuate the sub-ordinate status of women in society.

Since 1960s, feminists strive for the elimination of gender discrimination, for the greater recognition of women ’s contribu-tions to society and aim to change many cultural and social cus-toms that perpetuate patriarchal value systems. M any fields of life around the world have been, or are being, affected by this move-ment. 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.

III Factors of Sexism in the Language

Sexism in the language 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 Lan-guage? There are four factors:cultural factor, physiological factor, social factor and psychological factor.

i ）Cultural factor.In the Holy Bible, M AN 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 ani-mals 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 com-mitted by the woman. From above, the superiority of men and in-feriority of women is clearly seen. The Holy Bible is actually a book of men. As Christianity is such a powerful religion in West-ern countries, it is unreasonable to deny that this helps to set and consolidate the inferiority of women.

The backbone of the Chinese traditional culture is the Con-fucianist culture. However, more than 2000years ago, Confucius, the founder of the Confucianism had said:“only the female and the villain are difficult to raise. ”In Confucius ’mind, “women ”and “villians ”are the identical. Because of the position of women by Confucius, the status of women in the feudal society has no higher than villians .

In Song Dynasty when was in vogue in Confucianism, the women's words and deeds had to obeyed strict rules of some sub-mission and virtues , the so-called “sancongside ”. The dissolute emperor of Southern Tang Dynasty had a worse idea unexpectedly that the women ’s feet must be wrapped into “three-inch Golden Lotus ”for his enjoyment and playing. The masculine psychologi-cal superiority subsided into the language, which enables the Chi-nese language to have the distinct characteristics of gender dis-crimination.

ii ）Physiological factor .M any people argue that men are tall in stature, strong in muscle and robust in physique. However, women are small in stature, weak in physique and have more fat

II What is Sexism

Sexism is prejudie or discrimination based on gender. Like the other “isms ”, sexism can be both personal and institutional. It reinforces attitudes and behaviour based on traditional stereotypes of sexual roles in our society. Sexism can be anything from pay in-equality to a music video that portrays women as sexual objects. Sexism affects us all, but particularly women, as it is engrained in our patriarchal （male-dominated ）society. Sexism is an attitude that can affect women in almost every aspect of their lives and can prevent them from achieving their potential.

Sexism manifests itself in our society in many different ways, from the accepted gender roles to the language we use. When you think of the word “master ”and “mistress ”, which meaning holds more power? They both mean the same thing, a-part from the gender that is attached to it. What about bachelor or spinster? Which would you rather be? Almost anything can become an insult if you add ‘like a girl ’to the end of it. “Ahhhh you throw like a girl. ”

收稿日期：2009-02-08

作者简介：黄书霞（1973-），女，河南许昌人，硕士研究生，从事文体翻译理论与实践研究。—218—

and less muscle than men. In a word, men are stronger than wom-en. This determines that men play a more and more important role in social and economic lives. At last, women are lower in status. They have to leech on to men and are dominated by men. Gradu-ally, people begin to discriminate women and think that they are inferior in intelligence. This wrong perspective forms slowly and reflects in language.

）Social factor.Both the Western and Eastern societies use iii

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.

Due to women's relative physical weakness and lower educa-tional background, they do primarily the low-status, low-paying jobs. Although men also have family roles, they are defined pri-marily 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.

iv ）Phychological 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, deci-sive, and brave while women are required to be polite, conserva-tive, obedient, and gentle. Because women are in subordinate sta-tus 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. They mould themselves to be inferior in their potential sub conscious-ness. Therefore, women try their best to strengthen their social status through their speech than men do. The lower women ’s po-sition is, the more polite they are in the face of others. And the standard language they use can show their submission and polite-ness. This also suggests that women are in a lower position in the society.

IV Phenomena of Sexism in the Language

i ）From the word-building.M any professionals such as doc-tor, professor, engineer, lawyer, pilot, judge, surgeon can be used

s to indicate both males and females. But when indicating female ’

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.

Interestingly, when we hear other people say “M y cousin is a lawyer. ”, most people always conclude that my cousin is a male. M ost of the time, whenever we refer to a woman, we have to elabo-rately add woman, female or lady before many professionals.

But other professionals like secretary, nurse, typist, recep-tionist, dressmaker, are often used to indicate females. When they are used to refer to males, you should add male or man before them, such as:male nurse, male typist, and male secretary. It makes clear that men monopolize the high status professionals. Women can only do service work or low social status work.

English is a kind of super masculine language. This can be easily seen in compound words formed by word plus man struc-ture, such as chairman, businessman, congressman. From these words, we can easily know that males are the center of the society. These jobs are certainly taken by males and women are completely excluded.

Similarly, according to the statistic of Cihai （the most fa-mous Chinese dictionary ）, 100Chinese characters relate to the evaluation of female characters , among of which , derogatory

words account for 35, neutral words 18. For instance, “娼”“妓”、、“姘”、“嫖”、“婊”、“奸”、“婪”etc. Indubitability, among them , there are some dishonorable women, just like “娼”（whore ）、

（prostitute ）, however, the following characters “姘”（con-“妓”cubine ）、“嫖”（go whoring ）、“婊”（bitch ）also have the same element “女”（female ）, this is considered to be with an obvious ingredient of sexual discrimination. In fact, these behaviors cannot be made true unless the dishonorable men come forth. From this point of view, both men and women are responsible for it. As for

（奸）, it is men who should take the re-talking about “amour ”

sponsibility. However, it is unfair obviously that women still take it. Another example, some female characters which illustrate psy-“婪”（greed ）“妨”、（nuisance ）“嫉”、chological activities, just like

（envy ）“妒”、（jealous ）and so on. These activities not only women do but also men, but these characters are all with female elements, which demonstrates it is one kind of sexual discrimination.

ii ）From the word order .Sexism in language is also reflected in word order. When men and women are presented together, usu-ally words denoting male sex are put in front of female sex. M aking females come second reflects the sexist attitude that men are su-perior to women. It is not hard to find male-female word order pairs in English literature, newspaper, magazines as well as in speech, such as male and female, husband and wife, father and mother, boys and girls, his and hers, son and daughter, brother and sister, host and hostess, king and queen, Adam and Eve and so on. No matter in books or on radio, even in daily dialogue, we

（1）Good morning, boys and can often read and hear such words:

girls! （2）They would have allowed males and females to go to school together.

Such a language phenomenon seems to appear so unques-tionably natural as to be widely accepted as a language norm. In the Chinese language, there are still similar words and phrases, such as “男女”“夫妻”、“夫妇”、“子女”、、“公婆”、“哥嫂”、“父

、“祖父母”and so on. The traditional idea that men are to 母”

work outside while women are to stay at home is affecting the Chi-nese for generations, which reflects the order of the Chinese words and expressions, that is to say, they obey the principle of “male first, female second ”, so the above phrases emerge as the times require.

However, there are also cases in which male-female order is reversed, for example bride and groom, and ladies and gentlemen.

t show that women are Putting ladies before gentlemen doesn ’

more superior to men or ladies first, but indicates that in men ’s mind, women, the same as children, are the weaker ones.

iii ）From the appellation .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, M r., regardless of martial status. However, the martial status of women is distin-guished by M iss and M rs., 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 re-inforces 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 “M rs. 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.

iv ）From semantic collocation and metaphor.In English, a word may have different connotations when it is used to describe different sexes. Here ，the author takes “imposing ”as a sample:（a ）. He is imposing. （b ）. She is imposing.

Sentence （a ）means “He is impressive and admirable. ”While sentence （b ）could be interpreted to mean that “She is disgusting and apathetic. ”When the sex changes, so does the meaning.

In addition, language, in particular metaphor, helps form so-cial reality. There are many metaphors to describe a female. But often it has a totally different meaning. One is that some food

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words can also be used to refer to females, such as cheese cake （奶酪蛋糕———裸体女画），cherry （樱桃———处女），cookie （点心———可爱的女人），crumpet （松脆饼———性感女人），tart （果馅饼———妓女），and so on. M en often use these words to ex-press their appreciation to women. It even includes the meaning that men treat women as dolls. The other is that there are also many words showing contempt for women. They embody sexual discrimination but still enjoy great popularity. For example:chick （小鸡———少女），kitten （小猫———活泼年轻的姑娘），bitch （母狗———泼妇），cat （猫———丑妇、贱妇、讨厌的女人），and so on. These are all pejorative terms for women, because animals are considered to be inferior to human beings on the earth. So us-ing animals to refer to females indicates that females are inferior.

V About the Feminist M ovement

i ）American Women ’s M ovement .From the late sixties into the eighties there was a vibrant women's movement in the United States. Culturally influential and politically powerful, on its liberal side this movement included national organizations and campaigns for reproductive rights, the Equal Rights Amendment （ERA ）, and other reforms. On its radical side it included women's liberation and consciousness raising groups, as well as cultural and grass-roots projects. Today, many women in America hold important positions or are pursuing careers that they could not pursue in the past. But many women are dissatisfied with the cur-rent situation. Recently women worked to get an amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing their rights. The equal rights amendment, as it was called, was supported by most congressmen and most states. It did not get the support of two-thirds of the states which is necessary for a constitutional amendment. Nevertheless, the role and the rights of American women is an important concern in the U.S. today.

ii ）The Innovation in the language by the feminists .The fem-inists are taking up with the reformation of phenomena of sexism all the time, especially in the language, the most distinctness is to use nuetral words instead of male words. For example, A after the

, “mankind ”be-innovation. “mailman ”becomes “mail career ”come “human race ”.

s movement still affects the doctrine of judaism. The women ’

“God of father ”becomes “God of generation ”. In order to avoid sexual discrimination, “God of our mother, God of Sarah, Re-bekah,Leach ”follow to “God of our father, God of generation, Is-saal and Acob ”closely.

garded as the major category among solutions to sexist language.

Try to use gender-free words, for instance, child, teacher, officer, people, worker, immigrant,voter, coach, church member, sale rep, grandparent, leader, employee, testee.

Try to avoid giving examples that are traditionally regarded as of male or female. For example, usually when referring to a lawyer, a statesman or an officer, we use a male name or he as the subject. When referring to a secretary, a nurse or a teacher, we use a fe-male name or she as the subject. We can tackle such problems by using plural forms or other adaptations.

）Coining new corresponding words.The gender bias can iii

also be seen in the way that women are addressed through their social relations to men. The terms M iss and M rs. indicate the sex and marital status of the woman while the term M r. indicates the sex only. It is unbalanced and unnecessary to specify the marital status of women but not of men.

Since the 1960s,feminists had coined a new word “M s ”to de-emphasize the improper perception of marital status as a definitive feature of a woman's identity and personality. The new term M s, which is a combination of M iss and M rs., functions as an exact counterpart of the term M r.. Women who object to having a

“M s ”. title that is marked for marital status have adopted

iv ）Alternatives to Addressing Terms.Addressing terms are very important in our daily communication, and gender discrimi-nation certainly has some influence on them. There are many ad-dresses used to look down upon the females. In order to solve the problem, there are some strategies that may help:

Firstly, don ’t introduce some female through her husband, Sec-ondly, don ’t use terms which belittle women as wives or otherwise.

VII Conclusion

Since human being appeared on the earth, there have been existing two different genders-----male and female. On account of the differences between their physiological features and the su-periority 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.

Sexism is the systematic mistreatment of women as enforced by the cultures and the institutions of society. Sexism has dimin-ished the societal rights of （mostly ）women to exercise economic, political, and personal power. Sexism denies individual power, even over your own body.

In this article, sexist language use in vocabulary has been pointed out. However, it is not enough to just point out the prob-lem. A desire to change the patriarchal and sexist nature of lan-guage has been expressed and therefore we should be engaged in various types of linguistic reform or language planning. One of the important reasons for feminist language reform is that linguistic change is seem to lag behind social change, effectively hindering the linguistic reflection of social change.

Therefore, the key to better sexist language in English is to avoid using generic masculine words, lexical neutralization, coin-ing new words and striving for balanced naming and addressing system. But the elimination of linguistic sexism lies in social change. Only by changing the social structure till one day when women and men own really equal status can language equality be truly achieved. Consequently, linguistic action and social action should be taken simultaneously for the purpose of eliminating sex-ism in language.

VI How to Avoid the Sexism in the Language

Along with the women ’s liberation movement, people began to realize the importance of the language reform and desexism be-comes necessary. Then, should sexist language be changed or avoided? The answer is definitely positive, but how? The main strategies here to achieve this goal are avoiding the use of generic masculine, changing some naming and addressing terms, coining new words and advocating some neutral words.

i ）Avoiding using generic masculine words.Try to avoid generic masculine, “he ”can ba replaced with them, we/usand other forms. For example:（a ）When bathing a baby, never leave him unattended. →When bathing babies, never leave them unat-tended. （b ）From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. →From each of us according to our abilities, to each of us according to our needs.

ii ）Lexical neutralization .Lexical neutralization is also re-

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