A Probe Into Sexism Based On New Senior English For China

The culture and society can be understood through people’s language, because their behaviors and attitudes as well as thoughts are reflected in their use of the language. Sexism is a universal social phenomenon, which can be founded in each aspect of social life, but also in language. There are two groups of language sexism: sex differences in language (where speech differences between women and men) and sexism in language (where language is studied in the context). This thesis paid more attention to the linguistic features of sexism from the angles of origins, frequencies of male and female, sex roles, discourse analysis and so on.New Senior English for China is published by people’s education press is new high school English teaching materials (here in after referred to as NSEFC). It is on the basis of the revision which is used in1993high school English teaching materials (SEFC). NSEFC textbooks, in order to implement the idea and spirit of the new curriculum standard, the textbooks of NSEFC made a large improvement based on the SEFC textbooks. And it becomes the high school English syllabus to make the transition to the new curriculum standard textbooks. Therefore, the use of the NSEFC textbooks used in2003has attracted widespread attention. The teaching materials structure of NSEFC is reasonable, vivid form, beautiful design, which can meet the demand of the students’ reading psychology and appreciation. The method of cell division is still used in the textbooks, but canceled the practice of each unit and set up four classes, but set up a number of sectors. Teaching content in the NSEFC textbooks is close to student’s life, which is good to improve student’s thought quality and humanistic accomplishment. The teaching materials of NSEFC is the combination of subject, function and structure of the teaching method which is on the basis of the design of some of the task-based teaching activities, in accordance with the spirit of the new curriculum standard.As we know, the students who take part in the college entrance examination in the summer of2013, they are the first senior students who had learned these books. So it is important to do some research about it. Through the results of the research, we can know the limitation of the books. And it is never too late to do something to give a good leading to our students.The purpose of this thesis is to raise awareness of gender affecting language and the use of language, and to know how linguistic conventions for the expression of gender differences tend to reinforce these ideas in turn. In order to achieve this purpose, in this paper more data have been accumulated. The data in this thesis come from a diverse range of angles that vary in quality and reliability. The data come from the angles of frequencies of male and female, sex roles, discourse analysis and so on. In order to obtain the results other methodologies are employed such as comparison, statistics, induction and deduction, description and explanation, synchronic and diachronic approaches. Therefore, this thesis concentrates on the relationship of gender, language and analyzing the phenomenon of gender discrimination in English. It studies this phenomenon via analysis. That is to say; in this thesis there is not only the phenomenon of discrimination against females but also the anti-male bias in English.The paper includes six chapters. Chapter one introduces the research background, purpose and significance of the thesis. Chapter two is the literature review both at home and aboard, using the comparison way to analyze sexism. Chapter Three analyzes the origins of sexism from three angles:social origin of sexism, cultural origin of sexism and the religious origins. Through this chapter the author makes a clear introduction of sexism. Chapter four is the most important part of this thesis. It takes NSEFC as a case study to analyze the status quo of it. In this chapter sexism existing systematically in the series of English textbooks for senior high school students (altogether5books) from two dimensions:the content and the language. In the aspect of content, more data are used to find out whether there is the phenomenon of sexism in these books.(2) In the term of the occupational roles as well as family roles indicate that professional men outnumber professional women and the former mostly engages in those occupations which usually go with higher social, economic status, so the stereotype of a woman’s family role is reinforced simply as a cook, a caretaker of the kids and the other family members or a cook-cum-caretaker.(4) Linguistic analysis embraces firstness, marked for females while unmarked for males, masculine generic conception. The research in this dimension has perceived sexism in this set of textbooks. In this part more data and diagrams are enumerated to find out the sexism in NSEFC. In chapter six there are three suggestions to lessen the use of sexist language in textbooks. As we know the phenomenon of sexism can’t be avoided, in order to give a good leading to our students, what we can do is to lessen the sexist use of language. Chapter six is the conclusion of this thesis.