Sex Variation In English And Teaching Of The English Language

This paper explores educational advantage of the interest in sex-linked language generated by the women's movement and carefully examines the issues raised by feminists. First, issues related to Feminism and sexist language are introduced. After showing feminists' main ideas as well as the three representative schools, the confusing concepts of "sex" and "gender" are explained by citing the studies of some western socio-linguists. Then, the cause of sex discrimination is explored as a cultural phenomenon in society. The definitions of sexist and nonsexist languages are also introduced with accumulated examples. Also, the measures taken to use nonsexist language together with the controversy over nonsexist language are mentioned as well. Then, the paper moves on to the research on women's speech and the effects of feminists' critique. In this part, the relationship between language and women culture is discussed first. After that, the fruits of research on women's speech, such as the characteristics of women's language and female's speech styles are brought out to demonstrate the probing and diversified achievements of scholars in this field. Next, new development in research on sex speech is mentioned to show its effects on sex variation in English. As a result of the research above, the effects of feminists' critique and concrete ways to avoid sexist language are listed. In the following part, sexist language is related to teaching of the English language. Using the research conducted by western researchers, language discrepancy between male and female students is summarized. And from the perspective of English teaching, suggestions and guidelines on how to avoid sexist language in classrooms are given with examples. Finally, typical examples are listed to show English teachers how to design class activities creatively, which is just the first step in the long journey to the eradication of sex discrimination in language. It is hoped that Chinese teachers of English will be able to distinguish between fact and opinion, stereotype and generalization, hypothesis and research findings and at the same time to help their students avoid using words and expressions that are no longer acceptable to many people and organizations.