Gender Discrimination In The English And Chinese

As the peculiar result of the development of human society, language is a kind of social phenomenon. Its existence and development are closely linked with the social atti tudes of human beings and to a great extent are affected by their social views and values. For a long time, women have been discriminated against all the time and completely subordinated in political life, economic life and even family life in the society dominated by men. Unavoidably, this kind of phenomenon has been embodied in languages.Based on the relatively systematic analysis and explanation of the sexism that exists in both English and Chinese languages in the fields of lexicology, semantics, idioms etc., the thesis is trying to probe into this phenomenon's deep social, historical and cultural origins and give some opinions on the improvement and elimination of it. At the same time, the thesis aims to make it clear that it is not an isolated language phenomenon, which can not be fully understood if broken away from the social and cultural background. And it is the concrete reflection of the traditional thought of "male superiority to female" in language and it can be eliminated with the prerequisite of the elimination of feudal ideas. The change of language is limited by social culture. It changes with the change of social culture.