A Study Of Sexist Language In Desperate Housewives From The Perspective Of Feminist Stylistics

In western cultural tradition, women live in the patriarchal society system with a lower social position than men, thus men undoubtedly have the unconditional discourse right. Under the patriarchal society system, sexual discrimination and patriarchal consciousness are reflected in many social aspects. Human beings are the creator and user of language and language is similar to a mirror refracting the particular social phenomenon, so it inevitably involves sexual difference. Due to woman’s special role in society, such as most female teachers and mothers, women language is conferred with indomitable vitality, and then its influence and penetration greatly excel men language. However, to a certain extent, the language connotation involves discriminated tendency, mainly manifests in discriminating and depreciating against women. Although language itself does not possess discrimination tendency, it serves as the tool of conducting sexual discrimination.Since1960s, with the continuous development of feminism movement, the relationship between language and gender has been paid close attention as a popular topic by linguistics domain for a long time. Stylistics steps into the prosperous period from1960s and becomes a discipline which applies the methodology and theory of modern linguistics to the study of style. From then on, more and more stylisticians start to regard language as a substantial carrier of ideology. The main task of stylistics is to reveal and criticize the power relation and ideology contained in language. Feminist stylistics came into being under the background. Feminist stylistics leads the social gender idea into the study of stylistics, reveals the discrimination against women and the inflexible impression of social gender in the text analysis, and conducts the multi-meaning and fullness of text analysis, so that it can make the readers afresh survey the text from the gender perspective. On the theoretical bases of critical discourse analysis and critical linguistics, it puts the text into a given historical culture environment, and criticizes the patriarchal ideology hidden in language. Desperate Housewives has been the sell-well opera being on air on the station ABC (American Broadcast Center) in America since2004. It has been successfully transmitted8seasons till now. Under the perspective of protagonist Mary Alice Young, it surveys the real life condition of the housewives, who dwell in the rich middle-class community. The soap opera sets off an unprecedented viewing surge because of its alternate suspense, original beginning and fire-new perspective. As a soap opera, it takes feminist as the theme and depicts the existence of sexual discrimination and the valuable spirit of housewives’struggling for women’s power in the real life. However, it points out all kinds of specific household issues initiated by women’s resistance and compromise to the men’s dominant society. Middle class is the solid force of American society which typically informs the spirits, values and beliefs of the American nation. The class limitations of feminism in Desperate Housewives are easily can be seen. Under the harmonious and glamorous appearance of females, it manifests the standard and restriction to females in the patriarchal society. In addition, the dialogue and communication between females are one of the distinguished features, thus using them as the study carrier and research materials are of great representative meanings. The hot broadcast of Desperate Housewives transmits American deep social phenomenon and cultural peculiarity and triggers many scholars to follow with interest and study the gender culture in modern society.This thesis takes Desperate Housewives as the research target from feminist stylistics’perspective, using Sara Mills’feminist stylistics and sexist language as theoretical frameworks, and with the help of qualitative and quantitative methodologies, mainly analyzes the sexist language from lexical and syntactical levels. In the first place, this thesis analyzes the lexical features from the intensifier, extravagant adjective, expletive and euphemism’s perspectives and unearths the sexual discrimination hidden in language. In the second place, it analyzes the syntactical features from the hedge and tag question’s perspectives to reveal the relative information of patriarchal social ideology and display the patriarchal culture with men’s leading and women’s subordinating roles.This thesis is composed of six chapters:Chapter One offers a brief introduction to the background, the significance and objectives of the research and the layout of the thesis.Chapter Two provides the definitions of some important and relative terms of feminist linguistics. It as well gives an overview of previous studies on feminist stylistics and Desperate Housewives both at home and abroad.Chapter Three presents the theoretical framework of sexist language, and pays more attention to the overview of sexist language features both on the, lexical level and syntactical level.Chapter Four makes a detailed explanation of the research methodology, and data collection and data processing are included in this section.Chapter Five focuses on the analysis of sexist language in Desperate Housewives from the perspective of feminist stylistics on the lexical and syntactical level. It analyzes the causes of housewives’desperation revealed in sexist language. In addition, it presents a brief analysis of the reasons of sexism in language and how to avoid the use of sexist language reflected in Desperate Housewives.Chapter Six summarizes the major findings of the research, analyzes the limitations of the study and gives suggestions for further study on sexist language.