英语中的种族歧视探讨

西南大学本科生课程论文

论文题目：A Discussion about Racism in English 课程名称：社会语言学

任课教师：刘承宇

专业：英语

班级：2009级（翻译）4班

学号：222009310012080

姓名：陈小培

2012年12月30日

西南大学外国语学院制

Abstract

As a kind of social phenomenon, racism can be seen in language. There are many expressions which contain racism both in Britain English and American English. As we all know, racism, as a kind of social phenomenon which exists in English language, must function as the tool of social communication and will also influence our social life, such as in the aspect of economic, political, cultural and psychological life.

This thesis can be classified into 3 parts.

The first part is the introduction. And the introduction contains the definition of racism and the reasons of racism in English language.

The second part discusses those vocabularies and expressions about racism in English language. Specifically speaking, we will talk about vocabularies and expressions that used to discriminate against black people, Chinese and Dutch in English.

The last part is the conclusion. It will be about how can we treat those expressions about racism in cross-cultural communication.

Key words: English language, racism, expressions, cross-cultural communication

Chapter1 Introduction

1.1 Definition of Racism

According to the 7th edition of Oxford Advanced Learner‟s English-Chinese Dictionary (2009), the definition of racism is “the unfair treatment of people who belong to a different race; violent behavior towards them”. From the definition we can see, racism is the unfair and violent treatment that a race for another. In English, specifically speaking, racism is the unfair and violent behaviors and discriminations that British and American people exert on people from other races or countries. Racism can be seen in many perspectives of our social life, such as in economic, political and psychological life. Overall, racism expressed by language can be classified into two categories as below: one is that the racial discrimination contains in the whole sentence instead of the words which form the sentence. For instance, in Zhang and Liu…s (2005) article, “one Englishman can beat three Frenchmen” and “the Italian are wise before the deed, the German in the deed, the French after the deed”, and there is a similar example in Wang‟s (2000) book: “An American will go to hell for a bag of coffee.” Another is the vocabulary itself contains the implication of racial discrimination, for example, the word “negro” is a despisal for the black people.

1.2 Reasons of Racism

Race and language are closely related with each other. Once the certain language is mastered by a certain race, this language will be filled strong emotion by the race. Then undue favor for the language would be formed if things go on like this. This kind of undue favor encourages people insist on speaking the language even though defects are obvious, they do not want to change or reform. What‟s more, the development of Ethnocentrism will strengthen this undue favor.

In a word, the main reasons of racism are strong national sense of pride and national priority. A race must have its own standard about its behaviors, traditions and manners. And she uses her own standard to evaluate other races. Then the outcome is obvious, that is, the race is superior to others. So, expressions and vocabularies in language emerge automatically. On the strength of economic power, both British people and Americans