A Comparative Study Of Sexism In English And Chinese Language

Sexism in language has for a long time remained a heated topic among linguists, especially sociolinguists. As a system of beliefs and practices that affirm the dominance of men over women on the basis of sex, sexism is an international phenomenon which occurs in almost all languages. This thesis is a tentative endeavor to make a systematic description and comparison of the sexism between English and Chinese, in the expectation of deepening people's understanding of sexism in language, enhancing the self-consciousness of avoiding using sexist language, and ultimately promoting language and social harmony.Six parts are included in this thesis.Chapter One is an introduction which focuses on defining such key terms as sexism, gender and sex, the objective of this study and the literature review. Gender language studies in the west and in China are introduced respectively in this chapter. In the west, the existence of sexism has long been noticed, but the awareness of it remained perceptual and vague until 1960s when the feminist movement took place. The initial period of studies mainly concentrates on the gender language differences between males and females. In China, the study of sexism in Chinese began relatively late and substantial studies were found only after 1980. Globally speaking, the rise of sociolinguistics in the mid-70s gave great impetus to the study of sexism. Current studies in this field have shifted its focus from single linguistic variables to context-specific speech, drawing on approaches from discourse analysis and the ethnography of communication. Recent work also tends to be based more on empirical research rather than on casual observation or introspection. By conducting a systematic comparison of sexism between English and Chinese, this thesis is aimed to reveal the potential cultural and social factors behind the sexist phenomenon and ultimately promote the study of it and the formulation of remedies and strategies against sexism.Chapter Two and Chapter Three serve as the basis for the comparison in the following chapter. In Chapter Two, sexism in English is analyzed from the following aspects: the controversial man, the generic he, marked women and unmarked men, derogatory names for women and deprecated women in metaphors and proverbs. In Chapter Three, sexism in Chinese is then discussed from the perspectives of the origin of Chinese characters, word order, women's names, the generic masculine terms, and women in proverbs. In both chapters, a large number of fine examples are given, which prove that sexism dose not only exist, its occurrence is greater in number than it is expected and some of them are even beyond the consciousness of the people.Chapter Four is the core part. The author on the one hand puts forward four similar sexist phenomena between English and Chinese, and account for them from the perspective of living environment, cultural and social factors. On the other hand, differences in sexism between English and Chinese, due to different language types, are also explained. English is an inflecting language. A study of sexist usage in English will reveal the following ways in which English excludes, trivializes, insults women: generic male pronouns, universal man and man-compounds, trivializing suffixes for women in professions and names. Chinese is an isolating language. The ways in which Chinese subordinates women is mainly revealed in the fact that some characters that denote negative qualities all take"女"as their semantic symbol.Chapter Five is devoted to the discussion of linguistic strategies in minimizing or avoiding linguistic sexism. Language may help to shape not only one's ways of thinking but also one's behavior patterns. So enough attention should be given to language use. Gender neutralization is one of the possible and effective ways to minimize the linguistic expression of gender marking and avoid sexism. Besides, the writer also puts forward some other strategies of weakening or eliminating sexism and promoting language harmony in English and Chinese respectively.Chapter Six is the conclusion of the thesis. It emphasizes that sexism does exist and we do need to face it and overcome it as soon as possible, but it is by no means something which can be done overnight. Language is conventional. There is a long way to go to"eliminate"sexism in language. The writer also points out that the joint efforts from both social and linguistic workers are required. At present, there are two things that should and could be done. One is, from the social aspect, to educate the social members to be conscious of the harmfulness of sexism and try not to use sex-biased languages so that each does his or her own bit to build language harmony and social harmony. The other is, for linguistic workers, to strengthen the studies about sexism and to spot the questions so as to pave the way for formulating neutralized alternatives.