论英语中的性别歧视现象及其消除方法

论英语中的性别歧视现象及其消除方法［Abstract］Language reflects a nation’s history, culture and all of its entertainments, believes and prejudice. Therefore, language inevitably has the traits of sexism. It is the use of language which devalues members of one sex, almost invariably women, and thus fosters gender inequality. It discriminates against women by rendering them invisible or trivializing them at the same time that it perpetuates notions of male supremacy. This thesis is to talk about the sexual discriminations in English, traits of female language, and solutions to eliminate sexual discriminations.［Key words］English,sexual discrimination,female language,solutionI. Sexual Discrimination in English1.1 Take the men’s language as the standard language, and women as the ancilla of menIn English, there are many words with sexual discrimination phenomenon, and in the order of words, we can find that men are usually in front of women. For instance, Mr. and Mrs., his and hers, boys and girls, men and women, brothers and sisters, etc.. Because of the long-term historical reason, women have been put in the position of appurtenant of men. In many countries there is the tradition that unmarried women arenamed after their fathers, after their marriage, they are named after their husbands. In English, compared with men’s names, women’s names are slighting and they will always be called their husbands’family names, like Mrs. Smith. And in some paratactic phrases, women are always in the number two place, for example, King and Queen, Lord and Lady, husband and wife, and etc.. The phenomenon that considers women as the appurtenant of men can also be found in the word-building of some conjugated words, like prince —princess, host —hostess, mister —mistress, male — female, man — woman, hero — heroine, etc.. In these words, we can find that those words of men are not tagged while those of women are formed by adding additive morpheme.1.2 Take women as the exceptionIn English, there are many words that are “ruled” by men, like chairman, spokesman, freshman, brotherhood, etc.. Psychologically, people think that those reputable persons must be men, so once women become reputable, they will be considered as the exception. Most people (including women) will connect president, chancellor, professor, judge, and lawyer with men when they are mentioned, so in order to avoid misunderstanding, people will add the tag “woman” to those titles which will be given to women, such as woman doctor, female pilot, etc.. In English, man and woman is a couple of conjugated words. But the word“man” can not only refer to male adult but a lso all the human beings, while the word “woman” can only refer to female adult. And this also relates to the phenomenon that people consider men’s language as the standard one while the women’s language as the variation. If a word seemingly has only the character of men, then actually the word can be used to say both sexes, which is also a representation of men centered phenomenon. For example, in English, there are many words which refer to occupations end with “-man”, like fisherman, policeman, sportsman, fireman, and so on. Due to the suffix “-man”, people will connect people who do these jobs with men, but these words can also refer to the women who do the jobs.1.3 The third personal pronouns in use are likely to ignore women“He” can be used to mean a person whose sex is not known or anyone, as: Everyone should do what he thinks best. Though women occupy more than 50% in the world’s population, according to a Stat. the proportion of the use of “he” and “she” in literature is 4:1.1.4 Female words tend to be derogatory sense while male words are on the contraryHere are some examples of the words that are often used in couples: man / woman → prostituteking / queen → she-catlord/ lady → inamorata or ladylovemaster/ mistress → inamorataDifferent with these female words, male words tend to be commendatory. Words like man, king, lord, and master are considered as the eulogistic words, and if the first letters are capitalized, these words can refer to “God” or “Jesus”.In English, when some words are used to modify men, their meanings are positive, but if they are used to refer to women, their meanings are usually awful. Here are some examples:Tommy is easy. (He is easygoing and kind to people.)Barbara is easy. (She is wanton.)Matthew is cold. (He is disimpassioned and calm.)Helen is cold. (She is dissocial.)Edward is fast. (He dose things quickly and neatly.)Mary is fast. (It is easy to woo her love.)Philip is a pro. (He is a professional talent.)Jessica is a pro. (She is a prostitute.)Carter is a tramp. (He is a stroller.)Amy is a tramp. (She is a harlot.)Mike is loose. (He is lax in discipline.)Sally is loose. (She is profligate.)A call boy (a waiter in the hotel or a workman who call the actors and actresses to be on stage)A call girl (the prostitute who are called through telephone)Ⅱ. Traits of Female LanguageMany spectators think that languages used by male and female are different in many aspects, like in intercommunication. Female language is a very common phenomenon existing in every language in the world. Female and male will choose different ways to express themselves while giving voice to their thoughts in the same language. Women are educated to talk in gentle intonation; never defense others; be docile and modest while communicating; avoid giving any arbitrary opinions; and beware of self-complacence. Therefore the traits of female language can be summarized in the following aspects: word select; grammar select; and pronunciation and intonation.2.1 Word selectBoth sexes have their preference in word select, or we can say that a large amount of words are marked with either “feminine” or “masculine”. Male will not or think it scorn to use the words that are proper in female language, or in other words, the “feminine” words; in the same way, those “masculine” word are taboo to women. Women always express their feelings without any hesitations, and they like to talk in an exaggerated way, so their word select have the following traits:1. Women like to use the grandiloquent words, as “cute, divine, charming, gorgeous, and heaven ly” and so on. Of cause men sometimes also use these words, but according to the tradition, they seldom use these words to mean the same things. Sentences as “What a divine idea!” and “It’s a gorgeous meal.” are obviously spoken by women.2. Women will more often use those adverbs which have ascensive functions, as well as those adverbs which strengthen adjectives. For example, “so, such, quite, terribly” etc. Lakoff (1972) and Tarone (1979) proved that, men prefer using “very” and “really” in their interco mmunication while women prefer using “so”.3. Women are good at using some words of colors, especially those words which are seldom used by people, like “mauve, beige, lavender,magenta, taupe, aquamarine, azure” etc.4. Women like to add “-y” or “-ie” t o the end of some words or titles in order to denote the meanings of “small or little” or “intimate”, like “auntie, bookie, dearie, Jackie, Billy” etc. On the contrary, male adults will be laughed at if they use these words in the public.5. Women seldom use execrative language but interjections. Women pay more attention to the grace and connotation of their language and try their best to avoid using the vulgarity language, as “shit, damn, hell”, compared to these, they would like to use some interjections or phrases that are more gentle and implicative, like “Oh, dear.”; “My God.”; “My Goodness”; “Oops.”; and “Heavens”, etc.6. Women usually use nice Nelly to substitute those expressions that are unpleasant or disrespected. For example:Babara: What do you think of the color of my coat?Nancy: It’s interesting.7. Women use more polite formulas, “Thank you”, “please”, “You are so kind.”, “thanks”, etc.2.2 Grammar selectIn English there is no regulation saying that some certain grammarpatterns are only for women use. In grammar select, not like in word select, female language dose not have obvious traits, but those traits can still show the linguistic difference of both sexes. Women often use the grammar patterns as followed:1. Disjunctive questionWomen always add disjunctive question to the end of some statements so as to show their politeness, circumbendibus, and connotation. When they express their thoughts, they seldom adopt the direct way. They will not say “He can’t do that.” But say “He can not do that, can he?”. And the nurse will always say that, “We’re going to have our temperature taken, aren’t we?”2. Equivocal sentence and subjunctive sentenceWomen often use equivocal sentences to express their reverence and politeness to the listeners. For instance, nursery maid often use the sentence pattern: “we are going to take our snap now or go right to sleep”. Women would always try to obviate the direct order or request when they are having conversation. For example, when they want to have their husb and to wash the dishes they will say: “Wouldn’t you like to wash the dishes?” And when a house wife has had the lunch ready, due to her reverence and her culture, she will not say to her husband that, “Dinner’sready. Let’s eat.” But she will say: “Would you like to eat now?” or “Wouldn’t you like to eat now? It appears to me.” This sentence pattern emphasize particularly on the uncertainty of what the female speaker will talk about later or not to talk about directly because of some reasons. By using this sentence pattern, women think that they can decrease or eliminate the embarrassment may occur in conversation.3. Adjustive structureUsing the adjustive structure, which is very inobtrusive and polite, can not only show the tentative request and suggestion, but also obviate to answer questions directly. For example they would like to use some jook words, like I suppose, I think, I guess etc. and some modifiers that are less affirmative and cryptic, like probably, possibly, sort of, kind of and so on. This mood also reflects women’s characteristic traits that are less self-confident and decisive than men.4. Standard syntaxWomen are more conscious than men to use the standard syntax. For instance, women seldom use nonstandard multi-ply negative, as “I don’t want none.” According to a survey in Detroit, men occupy the most proportion of using the nonstandard multi-ply negative compared with women. Besides there are less nonstandard words in female language. Forexample the nonstandard sentence “Are you comin?” will often be found in male language, while women will use the standard sentence “Are you coming?”2.3 Pronunciation and intonationThere are differences in pronunciation and intonation in the languages spoken by men and women. The reasons of this are from both factors of formation of voice and social factors. There is a common fact that women’s pronunciation is more standard, and closer to “standard language”. According to Trugill and Fisher’s research, the great mass of men (about 62.2%) pronounce “-ing” as front nasal sound /in/, while there are only 28% of women do that.Women’intonation is more variational and expressive than men’s. Generally speaking, in order to show their respect and to create a comfortable phenomenon for conversation, when using sentence of the presentation mood, women would like to use rising tone to express their certainty, unlike men who would like to use the falling tone that is affirmative and unshaken. This is probably because that, compared with men, women dare not to show their determined and positive attitudes. For instance,Husband: When will dinner be ready?Wife: Oh… around six o’clock? ↗Though the wife is sure about the time when dinner will be ready, she would like to use the rising tone to answer her husband to show her uncertainty and fear.And another example is that a lady bought a new car, and she didn’t know how others thought of her car, then she would ask like this: Lady: I bought a new car yesterday.Man: What color is your new car?Lady: White.↗When she told the man the color of her new car she used the rising tone because she was not sure if the color was good or not and she wanted to know the man’s view of her car.Ⅲ. Solutions to Eliminate Sexual Discrimination in EnglishAs the development of the society and the improvement of the status of women in society, in the early 1970s, the women’s rights movement sprang up. Due to its influence, the English world has started a character revolutionary movement which aimed at eliminating the sexual discrimination in English language. In this movement, there was some non-sexist words were created and accepted by people. The solutions toeliminate the sexual discrimination in English are as the following:1. Avoid using words like man/men or mankind to refer to human or people. We should use those neuter words, like people, person, humanity, humankind, human, human being, human race, etc. For example,(1) All men are equal in the eyes of the law.→ All people are equal in the eyes of the law.(2) China ought to make great contribution to mankind.→ China ought to make great contribution to humankind/ humanity.2. Avoid using those compound words that are consisted of the word “men” to refer to both sexes. If the person’s sex is already known, we should use the compound words that are consisted of “man” to refer to man, and use the compound words that are consisted of “woman” to refer to woman, like businesswoman, chairwoman, policewoman, saleswoman, spokeswoman, etc. If the person’s sex is not known yet, we should use those neuter words to substitute the words “man” or “woman”, like businessman→ business person, (plural form) business people. And we could use some non-sexist words to replace some words that haven’t the postfix “-wom an”. For example, fireman→fire fighter, newsman→ news reporter.3. Avoid using the postfix “-ess” or the prepositive modifier “woman”, “lady” or “madam” to lay stress on sex. We should use the neuter words, for example, actress→ actor, authoress→ author, w oman teacher→ teacher.If the person’s sex must be clarified, we’d better use male and female, and better use them in couple. For example, It was a woman driver who sent me home.→ It was a female driver who send me home.3.4 Avoid using he, him or his to refer to both sexes. We should use the terms he or she, him or her, and his or her to substitute that. For example,(1) If a person breaks the law, he will be punished.→ If a person breaks the law, he or she will be punished.(2) A good student should fin ish his homework on time. → A good student should finish his or her homework on time.(3) You must know your friend’s needs before you give him help. → You must know your friend’s needs before you give him or her help.5. When we give examples, we should pay attention to those roles that have already been clung with sexes by people. For example, when we want to give examples of scientists, politicians, and philosophers, we willnaturally give an example of a man, or directly start the example with the word “he”. Similarly, when we mention nurse, secretary, or teacher, we will give examples of women, or begin the example with the word “she”. To this situation, we can do like the following,(1) the politician … he…→ the politicians … they…(2) the nurse … she… → the nurses … they…(3) Research scientists often neglect their wives and children.→ Research scientists often neglect their families.6. Do not introduce a woman through her husband. For example, Robert Jones and his wife Mary, or President’s wife Helen Blake.7. Repeat the title or appellation or use appropriate noun or synonym to substitute pronoun. For example,See your doctor first, and he will explain the prescription.→ Se e your doctor first, and the doctor will explain the prescription.8. Avoid using the appellations that discriminate women, like the better half, the little woman, the weaker sex, the fair sex, etc. Try not to use the sayings with traditional bias, such as ambitious men and aggressive women, cautious men and timid women, etc. And try not touse words like womanly, manly, feminine, which are well related with the characteristics of sexes.9. In letters, to those people that we don’t know or not familiar with, we could use their title of a technical post to avoid mistakes. For example,Dear Madam→ Dear ResidentDear Miss→ Dear Ms.Dear Mrs.→ Dear Ms.10. To idioms, we also need to use those neuter words to replace some sexual discriminative words. For example,Be one’s own man.→ Be one’s own person.Good will to Men. → Good will to All.Ⅳ. ConclusionThere are sexual discriminations in English. Language is a production of history, and sexism in language is the remains of history which could not be easily changed completely. 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