An Analysis of Sexism and its Origins in English and Chinese
Abstract
As a phenomenon of society, language reflects all sides of human society naturally. Sexism is a kind of discrimination by one sex against another, especially by males against females. Applied to language, this biased representation of the sexes concerns the portrayal of man as the norm and women as the appendage or as the exception in language, which is often called linguistic sexism or androcentrism—one of the main contents for sociolinguistics and a major subject of feminist linguists in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The thesis focuses on the manifestation of sexism in English and Chinese from the angles of generic masculine, naming and addressing terms. After a documentation of sexism, the thesis traces the origins of the occurrence of sexism in English and Chinese. Through discussing the reasons of sexism in language, it is devoted to discussing the strategies of reforming sexism in English and Chinese achieve linguistic equality.
Key Words: sexism；language；origin；manifestation；ways of changing
摘 要
语言是表达观念的符号系统，作为1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1种社会现象，不仅反映在社会生活中也反映在语言和语言的使用中，因此形成了语言性别歧视。它是社会语言学这1新兴边缘学科研究的重要内容之1，也是210世纪7810年代以来中西方女权主义语言学家研究的1个重要课题。
本文主要探讨性别歧视在英汉语言中第3人称单数阳性代词用作全称代词以及在取名和称呼用语方面的表现。通过对以上几方面的分析，追溯英汉语言中的性别歧视在历史环境和社会现实方面的根源。通过追溯根源，提出1些在语言平等和社会方面改变性别歧视语言的策略。
关键词： 性别歧视、语言、 表现、根源、改变方法