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
[16] These are all pejorative terms for women, because animalsare considered to be inferior to human beings on the earth. Sousing animals to refer to females indicates that females areinferior.
The semantic derogation of women helps to construct femaleinferiority and because women are confined to negative terms,women continue to be devalued.
4. Signs of the fading of sexism in the English LanguageLanguage is not only used to exchange ideas, conveyinformation, but also used to set up and maintain theharmonious relationship between human beings, create and keepthe effective communication environment among social membersand groups. Any form of sexist language, whether on purpose ornot, will probably stand off or offend some social member orgroup. Language and language use mirror social attitudes andstereotypes and bias.
www.dxs89.com
Along with the women’s liberation movement, people began torealize the importance of the language reform and desexismbecomes necessary. Then, should sexist language be changed oravoided? The answer is definitely positive, but how? The mainstrategies here to achieve this goal are avoiding the use ofgeneric masculine, changing some naming and addressing terms,coining new words and advocating some neutral words.
4.1 Avoiding using generic masculine pronounsLinguists engaged in study of sexism in the English languageare not satisfied with merely pointing out the problem. As asolution to the problems that the generic masculine cancreate, a number of proposals have been made. A major categoryamong these solutions is to avoid using generic masculine.
Some alternatives to avoid generic masculine are offered asfollows:
(1) The generic masculine he, his, him should be replaced withhe or she, his or her, him or her, and the like, whichexpressly indicate that women are included in the antecedentof the pronouns. This strategy can be illustrated with thefollowing sentence: Every good citizen should love his or hercountry more than him or herself; he or she should be ready todie for it if the need arises.
(2) The gender-neutral third person pronoun they and itsvariants should be used with a singular meaning. The proposalmakes it possible to say: Every good citizen should love theircountry more than themselves; they should be ready to die forit if the need arises.
(3) Changing the whole sentence into plural form can also helpto avoid sexism. Look at the sentence: Anyone can take part inthe picnic if he is interested. It is discriminatory. So wecan change it into a nonsexist one: All people can take partin the picnic if they are interested.
www.dxs89.com
(4) Sometimes the first and second pronouns are used toreplace he. List an example: One has to be careful when hecrosses the road. Obviously, it use he to refer to a personwhose sex is unknown. We can change it into “You have to becareful when you cross the road.” to avoid the discrimination.
(5) If permitted, the sentence can be changed into passivevoice to be nonsexist. Instead of saying “One should not loseheart when he is beaten in a match.”, one would be able to say“One should not lose heart when beaten in a match.”
(6) Dropping the masculine pronoun can also be seen as auseful way to escape from gender bias.[17] The followingsentence can help to know the strategy better. Anybody canattend the meeting if interested in it. Being discriminatory,it is written into “Anybody can attend the meeting if he isinterested in it.”
Feminists regard masculine pronouns as being ambiguous anddiscriminatory against women because they can be interpretedas being masculine-specific or neutral and thus, in somecases, be interpreted as not referring to women at all. So itis time that masculine pronouns were changed. The above aresome strategies used to avoid generic masculine. Thesestrategies are so useful that they can help the improvement ofsexism in language in some extent. And sexism in language isclosely linked with sexism in society. So it is good to theelimination of sexism in society in the final analysis.
4.2 Lexical neutralizationLexical neutralization is also regarded as the major categoryamong solutions to sexist language. Above I have cited someexamples that some professions are used to refer to men. Whenthey are used to refer to woman, female or woman or lady isoften used. In fact, people do not need to designate the sexof an occupation, for example, woman psychologist or malenurse. If you are quoting a qualified psychologist or nurse,should it make a difference if the information is coming froma man or woman? Generally, I sum up five solutions of lexicalneutralization.
www.dxs89.com
(1) Try to avoid using man/men or mankind to refer to peoplein the world and replace it with person, people, humanity,human, human being, the human race, and the human species. Thegeneric term man has been used in two ways: to refer to anadult male human being and as a synonym for "human being".
Obviously, when you use man and related words to refer to bothwomen and men, you are being sexist. For example:
① Man is the most intelligent of all species. (sexist)Humankind/human being is the most intelligent of all species.
(nonsexist)② All men should maintain the ecological balance. (sexist)All people should maintain the ecological balance. (nonsexist)Or: Everyone should maintain the ecological balance.
③ The project is one of the greatest man's achievements.
(sexist)The project is one of the greatest human achievements.
(nonsexist)(2) Try to avoid using compound words that consist of man torefer to both genders. If a compound word is for specific use,we can use a word+man to refer to man and a word+woman torefer to woman, for example, businesswoman, chairwoman,policewoman, saleswoman, spokeswoman, etc. If it is forgeneric use or the gender is unknown, we can create new wordsor compounds involving the word person or word people leadingto nouns, or shorten the word by cutting of the -man suffix,or replacing it with existing gender-neutral synonyms. Forexample,Avoid Preferbusinessman businessperson, businesspeoplechairman chairperson, chair, president, headforeman supervisor, superintendentmanmade artificial, syntheticcongressman representative, legislatorcouncilman council memberpoliceman police officer, law enforcement officer(3) Try to avoid using gender-suffixes which reflect women'slower rank and avoid using prepositional attributes likewoman, lady, madam when there is no necessity to show theirsex and use one form to designate a person in all threecontexts, i.e., in reference to a male, to a female or to aperson whose sex is not specific. For example:
www.dxs89.com
actress actoraviatrix aviatorusherette usherpoetess poetwoman engineer engineergirl athlete athleteIf it is important to mark the sex of the person, this couldbe done lexically, for example, we can use the adjectives maleor female.
，浅析英语中的性别歧视现象