Exploration Of Linguistic Sexism In English And Chinese

Language is the most important tool for human communication and thinking, and it reflects the thoughts, the attitudes, and the cultures of the people who make it and use it. By the late 18th century, scholars began to wonder how language came into being. Language was created by people through production and social practice and serves their purposes. Therefore, it tends to reflect social reality and is subjected to the restrictions of people's living habits, thinking patterns, behavior norms, moral values, political concepts and cultural traditions. Nevertheless, language, as a tool for communication, is limited in space and disappears in a flash in time. Writing, a system of symbols, was created for recording and conveying ideas, concepts, and information in the form of visual perception. And the creation of writing is closely related to human ideology.Human society in general is male dominant, and the persuasive ideology sees males as superior to females. Men and women are biologically different, and the difference in sexes determines their social roles. Man's dominant, superior social status and woman's subordinate, inferior social status have resulted in linguistic sexism. In English and Chinese, the male is associated with the universal and the subsuming, but the female is more often excluded. For example, the word'man'can refer to the male and all the human beings as well. Male words always occur first when listed with female words, e.g.,'father and mother (父母)'. Male words more often have positive connotations, conveying notions of power, prestige and leadership. In contrast, female words more often bear negative connotations, conveying weakness, inferiority and immaturity. Linguistic sexism exists at lexical, grammatical and discourse levels.Feminists criticize sex discrimination and advocate non-sex-discrimination language use and some of the new terms have gained acceptance, e.g., replacing"chairman"with"chairperson". Feminists have fought for eradication of sexist language use. Their intention is desirable but impracticable to some degree. After all,...