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
But other professionals like secretary, nurse, typist,receptionist, dressmaker, are often used to indicate females.
When they are used to refer to males, you should add male orman before them, such as: male nurse, male typist, and malesecretary. It makes clear that men monopolize the high statusprofessionals. Women can only do service work or low socialstatus work.
English is a kind of super masculine language. This can beeasily seen in compound words formed by word plus manstructure, such as chairman, businessman, congressman,newsman, statesman, salesman, mailman, policeman, andspokesman. From these words, we can easily know that males arethe center of the society. These jobs are certainly taken bymales and women are completely excluded.
In addition, there are some female professionals formed byadding the bound morpheme such as –ess, -ine to the root. Forexample:
Male Femalepoet poetessprince princessgod goddesscount countesshero heroineThis kind of word-formation seems to tell that women arederived from men and attached to men. These discriminatorypractices often make women invisible and treat them secondary.
3.1.5 Word orderSexism in language is also reflected in word order. When menand women are presented together, usually words denoting malesex are put in front of female sex. Making females come secondreflects the sexist attitude that men are superior to women.
It is not hard to find male-female word order pairs in Englishliterature, newspaper, magazines as well as in speech, such asmale and female, husband and wife, father and mother, boys andgirls, his and hers, son and daughter, brother and sister,host and hostess, king and queen, Adam and Eve and so on. Nomatter in books or on radio, even in daily dialogue, we canoften read and hear such words:
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(1) Good morning, boys and girls!
(2) They would have allowed males and females to go to schooltogether.
Such a language phenomenon seems to appear so unquestionablynatural as to be widely accepted as a language norm.
However, there are also cases in which male-female order isreversed, for example bride and groom, and ladies andgentlemen. The former shows that marriage is important towomen and the latter is influenced by the notion that menshould protect women. Putting ladies before gentlemen doesn’tshow that women are more superior to men or ladies first, butindicates that in men’s mind, women, the same as children, arethe weaker ones.[10]
3.2 Semantic derogation of womenLanguage has a tendency to neglect women, treat women assubmission and also demean women.[11] The process of wordsthat refer to women acquiring demeaning or sexual connotationshas been widely observed, and has been called semanticderogation.
3.2.1 Non-parallel semantic developments of paired termsMany sociolinguists have claimed that words become negativewhen shifted into the female sphere, while male has remainedpure and neutral. For example:
(1) King and queenOne is masculine, the other feminine and both mean “ruler ofan independent state”. King has retained its initial meaning,but besides the core meaning of queen, queen is also used as“a disparaging term for a gay or homosexual man”.
(2) Master and mistressBoth of them indicate ‘someone who possesses and/or has powerover someone or something else. For example: “ He is mymaster.” usually means “He is my boss.” or “He has more powerthan me.” While “She is my mistress.” is more likely to beinterpreted as meaning ‘She is my illicit lover.’ Mistressoriginally refers to a woman in a position of authority,control, and ownership, as the head of a household like ahousekeeper, but it implies a woman who has a continuingsexual relationship with a usually married man who is not herhusband and from whom she generally receives material support.
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(3) Wizard and witchBoth of them can be used to refer to people with evil magicpowers. Wizard also has a meaning of person with extraordinaryabilities, while witch means an ugly old woman.
(4) Sir and madamSir and madam both can be used to refer to high status people.
Madam is used formerly as a courtesy title before a woman’sgiven name but now used only before a surname or titleindicating rank or office or used as a form of polite addressfor a woman. Unlike sir, madam is also used to refer to abrothel keeper. There are also many other examples such aslord and lady, governor and governess. The examples citedabove demean women rather than men.
3.2.2 Semantic collocation and change(1) Semantic collocationIn English, a word may have different connotations when it isused to describe different sexes. For example:
① imposinga. He is imposing.
b. She is imposing.
Sentence a means “He is impressive and admirable.” Whilesentence b could be interpreted to mean that “She isdisgusting and apathetic.” When the sex changes, so does themeaning.
② looseLoose seems a neutral word for both male and female. But “aloose woman” reminds people of “a woman considered to besexually promiscuous” whereas “a loose man” just means “acasual man”.[12]
③ trampIt is defined as “a person with no home or job, who wandersfrom place to place” or “a woman considered to be sexuallyimmoral (esp. in American English).” In the example, He/She isa tramp. For the male, tramp refers to a vagrant whereas forthe female it can mean that she is promiscuous.
From the above, we can see that the same word shifts frombeing positive to being negative once it has moved fromreferring to a male to a female.[13]
(2) Semantic changeBesides, words, which begin with either neutral or positiveconnotations over time, acquire negative implications andfinally end up as “sexual slurs”. For example, the term hussyderives from Old English huswif (“housewife”), which means“the female head of the house”. The term graduallydeteriorated to “a rustic rude woman” and finally comes tomean “an indecent, impudent woman or prostitute”.[14]
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3.2.3 MetaphorLanguage exists to allow us to communicate with one another.
To this end, language serves two purposes: to communicate whatour reality is and also what we wish it to be. So if weidentify a trait in a language, such as sexism or other formsof prejudice, this only reveals a prejudice that exists insociety. Language, in particular metaphor, helps form socialreality. There are many metaphors to describe a female. Butoften it has a totally different meaning.
(1) food metaphorSome food words can also be used to refer to females, suchas cheese cake (奶酪蛋糕——****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)，tomato(西红柿——漂亮女人), honey (蜜糖——宝贝、亲爱的), piece (点心——女人)，peach(桃子——漂亮女人) and so on. Men often use these words to expresstheir appreciation to women. It even includes the meaning thatmen treat women as dolls.[15]
(2) animal metaphorThere are also many words showing contempt for women. Theyembody 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)，dragon(龙——倔强的女人)，hen (母鸡——爱管闲事的女人), cow (奶牛——子女多的女人、妓女)，crone(老母羊——干瘪的丑老太婆) and mare-horse (母马——粗声大气、肥胖固执的女人) and so on.
，浅析英语中的性别歧视现象