An Analysis of Sexism and its Origins in English and Chinese
Abstract
As a phenomenon of society, language reflects all sides of human society naturally. Sexism is a kind of discrimination by one sex against another, especially by males against females. Applied to language, this biased representation of the sexes concerns the portrayal of man as the norm and women as the appendage or as the exception in language, which is often called linguistic sexism or androcentrism—one of the main contents for sociolinguistics and a major subject of feminist linguists in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The thesis focuses on the manifestation of sexism in English and Chinese from the angles of generic masculine, naming and addressing terms. After a documentation of sexism, the thesis traces the origins of the occurrence of sexism in English and Chinese. Through discussing the reasons of sexism in language, it is devoted to discussing the strategies of reforming sexism in English and Chinese achieve linguistic equality.
Key Words: sexism；language；origin；manifestation；ways of changing
摘 要
語言是表達觀念的符號系統，作爲1種社會現象的.語言，必然會反映出人類社會的各種社會觀念。性別歧視是1種社會現象，不僅反映在社會生活中也反映在語言和語言的使用中，因此形成了語言性別歧視。它是社會語言學這1新興邊緣學科研究的重要內容之1，也是210世紀7810年代以來中西方女權主義語言學家研究的1個重要課題。
本文主要探討性別歧視在英漢語言中第3人稱單數陽性代詞用作全稱代詞以及在取名和稱呼用語方面的表現。通過對以上幾方面的分析，追溯英漢語言中的性別歧視在歷史環境和社會現實方面的根源。通過追溯根源，提出1些在語言平等和社會方面改變性別歧視語言的策略。
關鍵詞： 性別歧視、語言、 表現、根源、改變方法