英汉语言中性别歧视的比较
05-25, 2014
I. Introduction
Language is the most important tool for human communication and thinking, and it reflects the thoughts, attitudes, and cultures of the people who develop it and use it. Human beings use language to communicate ideas and to formulate thoughts as well. Language tends to reflect social reality and is subjected to the restrictions of people’s living habits, thinking patterns, behavior norms, moral values, political concepts and cultural traditions. Language is regarded as the existing form of thinking, even as “the identity card” of thinking. Human beings, whichever language they happen to speak or wherever they happen to live, share a great deal in common both biologically and culturally. These common biological and cultural elements can be referred to as biological and cultural universals. And the universals may lead to linguistic universals. But through different developments and influenced by the differences of living habits, thinking patterns, behavior norms, moral values, political concepts and cultural traditions, they will also lead to linguistic differences.
In ancient society, people lived on hunting and fieldwork. The labor-demanding farm work made male members the leading force of the society gradually. Men soon surpassed women in importance and became the dominant figure in family as well as in society. A patriarchal society has been established since then. This patriarchal society is based on the belief that the male is the superior sex while female is the inferior sex and many of the social institutions and much social practice are then organized in language to reflect the belief. Both English and Chinese have traces in language of discrimination against women.
The study of the sexism in language has been highlighted as a hot issue in the linguistic domain for long. Sexism is controlled both by cultural gender roles and by predominant national culture. With the mixture of different cultures and languages in modern times, there is no doubt that communication can be very complicated and difficult, so cross-cultural and cross-gender issues have increasingly drawn scholars’ attention. In recent years, anthropologists and sociolinguists have carried out many studies in this field. The results stemming from this research can help people to understand better the sexist phenomena in various cultures, which will improve the quality of communication and promote to achieve the harmonious language. Based on the previous research, this thesis is a tentative attempt to analyze the sexism both in Chinese and English from the aspects of similarities and differences, and then to discuss the feasible and effective ways to eliminate sexism in these two languages respectively.
II. Similarities of Sexism Between English and Chinese
Language is used in social contexts; it is used to construct and maintain social relationships between women and men. Each society has its unique geographical and historical framework in which a unique language has been established and developed. As there are no two languages in the world that are identical in every way, there are no two cultures that are same in every aspect. Each language is unique. But this is not to say that there are no similarities between languages. People living in different national boundaries are all human beings living in the same world. There should be in theory and are in reality many similarities among national cultures and languages. These cultural and language similarities reflect the universal aspect of culture and language. In this chapter the author of this thesis will mainly discuss the similarities of sexist usage between English and Chinese.#p#分页标题#e#
2.1 Similarities of Sexist Phenomena in English and Chinese
2.1.1 Sexism in Proverbs
Proverbs are short sayings handed down from generation to generation. They are a mirror of a nation and a living fossil of a language. As a result, the study of them has gained increasing amount of attention of social scientists such as sociologists, anthropologists and sociolinguists. Proverbs often reveal a nation’s moral or ethical principles. The following English and Chinese proverbs have been accepted and used by many people. They reflect social discrimination against women in both English and Chinese cultures.
From the concept of values: Confucius equated women with debased morality when he said that “唯女子与小人难养也，近之则不逊，远之则怨。”（《论语.阳货》 第十七章）(Only women and the morally debased were difficult to support). And Shakespeare said in his famous“Hamlet”:“Frailty, the name is woman.”(弱者，你的名字是女人). Other English proverbs showing women are inferior are: A man of straw is worth a woman of gold(稻草男儿抵得金玉女子) . Man, woman and devil are the three degrees of comparison.(男人，妇女和魔鬼，三级差别分贱类). The Chinese counterpart is:
雌不上战场。 沙子打不了墙，女儿养不了娘。
The cause of the misfortune can be also found in women: Sometimes, women’s beauty becomes their fate. Women are said to be the cause of misfortune. In China, women are called红颜祸水. In English, since the time of Adam and Eve, women have been bringing sin into the world. So women are regarded as dangerous. Such proverbs are:
Women are the devil’s net. (女人是魔鬼织的网)
Women are the snares of Satan.（女人是撒旦设下的陷阱）
No war is without a woman. (夫成城，妇倾城)
2.1.2 Unmarked Masculine Nouns but Marked Feminine Nouns
Both in English and Chinese, masculine nouns are usually unmarked, while some feminine nouns are marked. In English, the suffix–ess is used to mark some female nouns, such as actress, princess, heiress. In Chinese square-shaped characters, many words related to females contain the meaning element or radical ‘女’ to mark the female such as ‘妈(mother),姑(auntie),姐（elder sister）’, but the word ‘男’ is not used as a meaning element or radical. The absence of a specific masculine radical in the Chinese writing system results in a gender asymmetry similar to that in English, implying man is the norm, i.e., equated with human beings in general. Maybe we can infer that it is because God made the first man ‘Adam’ before he made the first woman ‘Eve’ from Adam’s rib. Consequently, when it comes to the creation of writing, the creators followed the order that God made Adam and Eve. When adding the suffix-ess to form other feminine nouns is infeasible, the creators put a feminine noun in front of the other nouns as a mark. So, if a male takes the position of doctor or judge, he is referred to as ‘doctor’ or ‘judge’, but if a female happens to be a doctor or judge, she is marked as ‘woman doctor’ or ‘woman judge’. Similarly, in Chinese, if a male takes the position of doctor or judge, he is referred to as “医生”、“法官”, but if a female does the same job, she is marked as“女医生”、“女法官”.#p#分页标题#e#
2.1.3 Word Order
In both Chinese and English, word order reflects the sex-bias against women. When men and women are presented together, usually men are given precedence and listed before women It is said that that it was more natural to place man before woman, as in male and female, husband and wife, brother and sister; son and daughter. Some linguists assume that people are used to follow a “good to bad” order when arranging word orders, such as “good-bad”, “rich-poor”, “day-night”, “light-dark”, “big-small”. The arrangement of “man-woman” follows the same rule, implying that men are better than women, or a traditional idea in China—男尊女卑(Men enjoy higher status than women). Though this assumption sounds too extreme, it reminds us of the possible negative influences that the word order might have on people’s thinking. Let’s see the following examples in English: man and woman, boy and girl, male and female, brother and sister; husband and wife, father and mother; In China, as idiom shows, husband is the authority in a family and is usually put in the first place. The common male-female patterns like“夫妇，夫妻，男女，父母，公婆，叔婶，兄嫂，弟妹，夫贵, 妻荣”, etc. But there is an exception in English, we say “Ladies and gentlemen”, but we almost never say “Gentlemen and ladies”. To this conception, it may be because of the traditional custom of “lady first”.
2.2 Reasons for the Similarities of Sexism Between English and Chinese
2.2.1 The Living Environment
The sexual inequality is rooted within the society itself. Family constitutes the basic unit of society and each home exists as a state in miniature. Discrimination against women is deeply rooted in the structure of society----in the rules women play, and in the sexual division of labor which restricts females primarily to the domestic sphere of life. Thus, the patriarchal family becomes the cornerstone----the basic social unit.
The earliest tradition affecting the role of the man and woman is that of the hunting age. In primitive society women had the task of gathering the vegetable/fruit/root part of the diet while men had the task of gathering the meat. Compared with hunting, gathering was easier. Very often the hunters would return home with nothing, while women would certainly brought home some vegetables and fruits for diet. Besides, women had the major responsibility to bear and rear children, which maintained the extending of the society. Therefore, in gathering-hunting time, women played a more important role in the productivity.
Women’s contribution to the food supply contributed to the matriarchy system. However, with the discovery of the cause-effect relationship between seed planting and harvest, and the invention of the plow, eventually the hunting society yielded to the agricultural society. Because the farm work required great physical strength and endurance, men gradually took leading roles in the food production process. Typically, women’s farm work was only that of a helpmate. Women became increasingly dependent upon men although they still played important roles in childbearing and childrearing and in food preparation. As such, their dependency increased, and their status decreased. One of the new features in agricultural society was the need to possess a given land. The eldest male, the patriarch, held the land and his sons would inherit the land and the status. Women were robbed of land and property, and then had to be dependent on men for food and shelter. In addition, women possessed no political rights and were completely excluded from social and political life. It then became a tradition that men work outside maintaining prime responsibility for the economic survival of the household while women stay home doing‘trivial’housework. The Chinese phrase“男耕女织”(men till the land and women wove at home) clearly shows us the picture of agricultural society. Eventually, with technology expanded, industrial society evolved. Although the beginnings of industrialization brought some women into cottage industries, the middlemen who provided the raw materials only employed them. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries brought the challenge of industrialization, which had profound impact on men’s roles. Until the nineteenth century, work and home life were one; the family functioned as a center for economic production as well as the primary source for meeting its members’ needs. For most people, work and home, family members and work colleagues, and daily life were in the same place----the family household. Decreased infant mortality rates and increased awareness of the importance of child rearing led to an emphasis on man as breadwinner and woman as mother/housewife. With the rising population, more and more persons became land-less, and therefore, the working-class businessman became the new hunter. Business as battle, a man fights, campaigns. As the development of industrialization, there has been a shift from the private patriarchal within the family to public patriarchy centered in industry and government.#p#分页标题#e#
With regard to marriage the girl was just as much a pawn in the hands of her family as was the man, which is showed in the Chinese character for a wife----妻. Monogamous marriage develops as part of the formation of private property. Particularly in the rich family, the development of private property creates the need to determine lineage for the purpose of inheritance. There existed monogamy for women while polygamy for men. Both in Western countries and in China, in feudal times, it was always the king, not the queen, who ruled the country. In the oriental countries, especially in China, a king not only had the queen as his wife he might have hundreds and even thousands of concubines. It was usual for a man to have several wives at the same time. Women were only considered as his possession or sex object. In ancient China, women could even be exchanged in the markets like private objects or animals.
As men’s private property, women’s status was very lowly. As the society’s natural and necessary institution, the family has defined women’s function as sexual, procreative, and child-rearing machine. Girls were less valued than boys; women were unable to inherit and therefore did not become owners of the land; though they maybe had more voices in family decisions, were ultimately subject, especially when young, to the authority of men. Such, very generally, was woman’s place in the traditional family and society.
Likewise, modern family is a sociological phenomenon that is a consequence of cultural changes based on equality. The custom of women working primarily as homemakers is rapidly changing also; in our society, women employed outside the home outnumber full-time homemakers. This is a response to cultural changes as small families, the economic pressures and high costs of rearing and educating children, the development of laborsaving devices and convenience foods, the raising of self-consciousness of women, as well as a reflection of the change in male-female relationships. Nevertheless, most still believe that the husband’s career is primary and the wife’s career is secondary to the needs of the family and to the husband’s career decisions. In modern marriage, the male is still dominant but not as strongly as in the past. The spouses may do housekeeping chores together, take turns, or divide tasks according to skill and interest. However, no matter who does what, in the most of the families, the wife still carries the responsibility for domestic tasks and man, invests in his career. The wife’s primary role is to care for the home and children. The husband’s primary role is still that of breadwinner. If possible, the wife does not work outside the home, since this would reflect negatively on her husband and would undermine her primary work as wife and mother. If she does work outside the home, it is usually due to financial necessity and is considered a stopgap measure rather than a career.
Both traditional family and modern family as we have described are rooted in the hierarchical society. A pattern where fathers arrange marriages and pass control of their daughters over to the complete authority of their husbands, where wives are defined in their homes, and also is agreed with the Biblical hierarchical ideal and traditional Chinese ethic as well.#p#分页标题#e#
2.2.2 The Cultural Reasons
The culture decides the way of people’s value. Although the English-spoken countries and China have different cultures, there exists the same vision to the female.
2.2.2.1 The Female Imagery in the West
Woman as a source of danger, as a represent of evil, is an image that runs through patriarchic history. Since she is depicted as the source of sin and evil, her subjection is seen as her justified desert. From the very beginning of Greek literature, a strong discrimination against women is obvious. From the heroic to the classical age, the status of women was not improved, and this was especially true of classical Athens. The narrowly defined function of women as children bearers and housekeepers was well recorded in classical Greek literature. Marriage to a woman was primarily for a economic consideration; girls were not educated: they only learned the arts of housekeeping; Women were confined in household and were denied access to all those places where men discussed and learned about civic and intellectual affairs-----the gymnasia, the market place, the law courts; even the highest emotion was considered between the male sex in the homosexual culture of Greek aristocracy. While the monogamous sexuality was not imposed on men, the worst possible crime a woman could commit was unfaithfulness to her husband. Even if her husband died, a woman had no control over her life or her body. According to Genesis, it is man that created the world and then named the world. Woman was created just as a helpmate for man. And she was not created until all other animals failed to meet the need of the man. The woman was made of a rib of the man and therefore she was destined to be the appendage of man. And the name woman, according to the Bible, simply means that “she was taken from men”. This myth illustrates an attitude fundamental in man’s view of woman: She is limited to being his mate, just as Eve is for Adam, instead of taking up her own task of becoming an individual woman. From all these above the superiority of men and inferiority of women is clearly seen.
In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve saw that they were naked because they had eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And God asked:“Who told you that you were naked?” Eve said: “It’s a snake”. There is an inherent bias in interpreting Adam’s eating of the apple as a sign of his strength and superiority, and the woman Eve is branded as a dangerous irresistible temptress. She was the cause of his downfall and sin and all his miseries, so she Eve (and the female) is associated with evil. She (female) follows the pattern laid down by Eve. This views they express are still deeply embedded in the minds of human beings and had unseen and unrecognized forces to human thoughts in the west.
2.2.2.2 The Female Imagery in the East
The Confucianism in China is the teaching of Confucius (500 B.C.), a system of philosophy and ethics, which is regarded as the Old Testament of the Chinese Bible by some scholars. There was a saying in ancient China that半部论语治平天下(“论语”The Analects of Confucius is the collection of Confucius’ quotations, meaning the knowledge of half of Confucius’ LunYu will enable one to rule the country well).The feudal ethics have a profound impact to Chinese civilization and its teaching and rules have been bound by the whole Chinese nation for thousands of years. In this broad and universal sense, Confucianism is something like a religion. Confucius’ teachings have become the basis of Chinese life. If we say that the Christian teaches a man to be a good man, we also can say the Confucianism teaches a man to be a good citizen and a dutiful son; Christian teaches man to believe in God while the Confucianism teaches man to absolutely obey “Heaven” and Emperor, and filial piety to parents－in Chinese, ZhongXiao(忠孝). In fact, the Three Articles of Faith, called in Chinese the San Kang(三纲)，are three basic duties in Confucianism: first, absolute duty of loyalty to the Emperor; second, filial piety and ancestor-worship; third, absolute submission of the wife to the husband(夫为妻纲).#p#分页标题#e#
Women were naturally inferior to men and all of the Chinese traditional religious moral teachings say so. Obedience was the rule for all the women. Chinese women lived in a state of dependence. As a child, she was to live for her father (在家从父). Although loved, she had, unlike her brothers, to submit to the fearful pain of foot binding. When her parents arranged her marriage, she entered her husband’s household as a stranger and was to live for her husband (出嫁从夫); and, as a widow, she was to live for her son (夫死从子). The Chinese feminine ideal is summed up in this“three obeying” (三从) and“four virtues”(四德). Now what are the four virtues? These are: first womanly character(女德); second, womanly conversation(女言); third, womanly appearance(女容); and lastly, womanly work(女工). Womanly character means not extraordinary talents or intelligence, but modest, chastity and perfect manners. Womanly conversation means not brilliant talk, but refined choice of words, never to use coarse language, to know when to speak and when to stop speaking. Womanly appearance means not beauty of face, but personal cleanliness and faultlessness in dress. Lastly, womanly work means not any special skill or ability, but hard work to do cleaning, cooking, sewing and so on, never to waste time in laughing and gossip.
2.2.3 The Social Reasons
In the society, there exist different kinds of discriminations against women. As language reflects social reality, the author will trace linguistic sexism to social factors through the major aspect: education.
The vast majority of women lived in ignorance and seclusion. Women had long been deprived of the access to education in history in China. Traditionally only a minority of families sent children to school. Education spending was regarded as an investment for the future, for an educated boy might get on in the world and in doing so increase his family’s prosperity. There was little incentive to make such sacrifices for girls who would leave their own families on marriage. Her parents might well bring her up with some reluctance－in the southeast of China, for instance, the Cantonese and Hokkiens referred to their daughters as “goods on which one loses his capital”, the point being that it cost money and effort to raise and train a girl only for all the investment to be handed over to her husband’s family when she married. The girl began to share in the housework and baby-minding responsibilities at a very young age, while her brothers were allowed a much longer, much free childhood. The boy went to school if he was fortunate, but girl rarely had such an opportunity. Young girl as a female would throughout her life be seen as less important and less valuable than a male. To make women accept their inferiority identity, the feudal rules tried every means to keep them ignorant. Women were excluded from education and were for the most part condemned to illiteracy. Their illiteracy rate reached over 90%.The whole training of a daughter by her family was aimed at fitting her to be a wife, mother and worker for another family. Of course, some rich families expected their daughters to acquire literacy in addition to such ladylike skills as household management, embroidery, and sewing. The texts provided for the Chinese women, of which the“four books for women”(女四书，including“女诫”，“女论语”，“内训”，“女范”)are the best known examples, were attempts to teach Confucian decorum (礼教) and the ideal of submissive femininity. By the end of the 19th century no schools opened to women. According to data, the first private school for women in China was set up by Westerners in 1884 in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province; in December 1887, Kang Guangren, a bourgeois democrat, opened a women’s school in Shanghai, the first of its kind established by a Chinese. But these girls’ schools did not have much influence on women themselves because only a few of richer families sent their daughters to school. In fact, it was the Reform Movement of 1898 that ignited the wave to forbid foot binding and establish schools for women. Being illiterate, women in feudalistic China took obey as a merit and their“no-self”identity as being intended by“Heaven”, as the common phrase“女子无才便是德”implies. As a result of their poor education, the writings of those women were not good and often became an object of mockery. “女人头发多见识短”and“妇人之见”all implicate women’s supposed low intelligence. Such women were regarded as“绣花枕头”(A pillow with a beautiful embroidered case outside but stuffed with a lot of straw; or having a attractive appearance, but with rubbish inside) in Chinese.#p#分页标题#e#
The situation was much the same in the most of the Western countries. Women were simply regarded as being intellectually inferior and incapable of great thoughts. Custom did not permit girls to be educated, to work, or to have social activities. Women have traditionally been discouraged from studying the holy Bible or even learning Hebrew. Their only aspiration was marriage and family. A woman’s education comprised only those needleworks and dancing----traditionally deemed sufficient for a young woman to catch a husband, run a home and bring up children. A married woman could only darn socks, sew, cook, clean and take care of her man and her children. The account in Genesis of Eve’s tempting Adam with an apple and leading him into original sin was a constant reminder of their inferiority identity. Some “experts” even went so far as to argue that too much use of a woman’s brain would damage her reproductive organs and thus endanger her vital childbearing function. F .W. Nietzsche said, “When a woman inclines to learning, there is usually something wrong with her sex apparatus.” Dr Johnson said, “A man is better pleased when he has a good dinner on the table than when his wife talks Greek.” There was a great common pressure upon women to engage in intellectual pursuits. The schooling of the Christian girl generally went no further than teaching her to read so that she could know the Scriptures. Beyond that, schooling was thought to be useless or even harmful to girls. Colonial American schools in 1700s did not provide education for girls in any significant way. Those illiterate American women in the 18th century even took their inferior identity for granted and believed that they were destined by nature to be the mother of the race and they would gladly accept the doctrine that “The Gods…have plainly adapted the nature of women for work and duties within doors, and that of man for work and duties without doors…”and “Home is, and ever will be, woman’s primal kingdom.”
III Differences of Sexism Between English and Chinese
3.1 Ideographic Language and Alphabetic Language
English and Chinese are two different languages and have different language systems.
In the Chinese language the relation between written and spoken forms is less close than in English. In Chinese, the written language is largely ideographic and can be read quite independently of the spoken language. In Chinese, each character is viewed as a unique picture and can have immediate or direct access to meaning. Memorization comes easily. Because reading involves visual input, characteristics of the visual system do affect the reading process.
Another advantage of Chinese characters is that it is easier to classify of a large number of items. For example, being a radical “足” means leg, so all the followings characters“跳，跑，蹦，跃” are all related to “足”.#p#分页标题#e#
The third and the most important advantage of the Chinese language is that it is an analytical system, that is, every character has a metaphor meaning. It may suggest pictographs like “shui” 水 for water, “huo” 火 for fire, “ren” 人 for peple. A woman and a son is “hao” 好，the character‘ren’人(man) repeated three times众, since“three is a crowd.” As Glahn(1973)observes, “Such a language is already half way to poetry.”
So compared with English, Chinese ideographical characters give us stronger visual stimulus than the alphabet English upon our thoughts; some“nǚzi pang(female radical“女”)”such as“妇，妻，妾，妃”and“好”more clearly and explicitly give pictures of women’s low status in family and society; there are more vocatives to address woman in ancient China such as“贱内，贱人，糟糠，内人，内助，内主，奴家，贱妾，卑妾，老婆，婆娘，家里的，屋里的，做饭的，烧火的，孩子他娘”and so forth. While in English there is only one equivalence“wife”; in English there is only one word for the legal union of a man and woman as husband and wife－that is“marry”, either“John is going to marry Jane”or“Jane married John”is all OK. But in Chinese, there are two words for“marry a person”:“嫁”，meaning give somebody(esp. one’s daughter)in marriage(to a man), offer her as a wife, marry off;“娶”，meaning take somebody(a woman)in marriage. So the Chinese language more clearly reflects the nature of marriage of the patriarchal society―mercenary marriage(买卖婚姻).
3.2 Isolating Language and Reduced Inflecting Language
It has been claimed that English is an inflecting language and Chinese is an isolating or monosyllabic language. Grammatical patterns and rules operate differently in each language. Since one character by itself represents one morpheme, its perception should be wholistic. The Chinese word for “mountain”,“山”(shan),is one syllable, and one character. One character may consist of several strokes (three in shan), but the strokes do not have individual semantic and phonetic functions, as do English letters or letter groups. By contrast, an English word consists of a number of subunits, each of which has a semantic and/or phonetic function. Consider mountains. It consists of two morphemes, 2 syllables, 7 phonemes, and 9 letters, while each Chinese character is processed not stroke by stroke but as a whole visual pattern. At most, reading English is sometimes from small to large units, that is, from letters to words; while reading Chinese, each character may be analyzed according to its radical and phonetic.
Although a conclusion can be arrived that English and Chinese can be equally used to convey meanings, the obligatory explicit grammatical markers are larger in number in English than in Chinese and they are used more frequently in English than in Chinese. As to gender issue, the notion of man is unmarked category and woman is the marked category in English. This is reflected in pairs of words that are distinguished by gender. When a word referring to a person is distinguished by gender, the feminine form is often marked with a suffix, which at times carries the sense of a diminutive or negative. Mistress, for example, seems to have connotations of lower status. Also, Women’s professions and titles are sometimes indicated by adding derivational morphemes such as“-ess” or “-ette”, and then yield pairs such as#p#分页标题#e#
actor/actress
governor/governess
In cases where formal marking simply signals the feminine form (as in governess), this is also semantically marked. The masculine term is formally unmarked and also normally semantically unmarked. The unmarked form can refer to men or whole human beings in general(as in lawyer; worker; schoolmaster).When a speaker wishes to refer to a professor regardless of sex “professor” tends to be used; while referring to female, “female professor” tends to be used. Similarly with terms referring to a mayor, “mayor” tends to be used as both a male referring and a sex-neutral term; while referring to female, “female mayor” or “woman mayor” tends to be used. If terms such as mayor; doctor; schoolmaster make us think only of males, then terms with-man are even more likely to do so. A great many words are constructed by the addition of man. How many women are likely to apply for jobs when advertisements proclaim the employer is looking for a salesman, dustman, fireman or sportsman? It seems that there is a systematic basis to linguistic discrimination against women in English. The structures of language itself－its vocabulary and grammar―discriminate against women. The words, word forms and meanings made this discrimination against women, and made women semantically invisible or semantically degraded. This is no worse than women having to live with the feeling that they are permanent exceptions to a male (supposed human being) form. To return to our focus on man and the relationship between lexis and perception or thought, we will now examine man and other so-called generic-masculine words in context. Studies have been undertaken, mostly by social psychologists, to test the extent that usage of the so-called generic man causes male bias in thought. Research in psychology does show that thought is affected by language, that mental imagery is different according to whether -man suffix/person or suffix/no words are used and also the negative effects of-man compounds upon visual judgments.
Using “man” to mean both the male human and all human is confusing. The lexicon of the English language makes it difficult to express women’s experiences. Chinese logographic writing, on the other hand, with its combination of determinative and phonetic, does not know this problem. In Chinese there is a character“人” (ren) referring to the whole human being, both male and female, the problems seem to be avoided. While the problems with the job titles in Chinese are similar to those identified in English. It seems that job titles are only applied to men except for a few jobs such as nurse, secretary and elementary teacher. You cannot add a suffix to express the gender. If a woman is doing a job，“女”(woman)is usually added to the normal title, e.g.“女运动员，女律师，女司机，女市长，政治局常委(女).”
IV. Feasibilities of Reducing Linguistic Sexism#p#分页标题#e#
Language is a result of previous development and at the same time the starting-point of subsequent development. And language, as a social phenomenon, tends to reflect social reality. With the change of politics, economy, education, science and technology, and people’s ideology, the majority of positions originally exclusive to men, such as leadership positions, science-and-technology-related positions, medicine-related positions, education positions, are just as likely to be held by women as by men or vice versa. So linguistic change might be expected to follow. Additionally, some legislative measures have contributed to the creation and adoption of non-discriminatory terminology. For instance, laws dealing with equality between sexes and equal employment opportunity affect the use of job titles and occupational terminology. In Britain, the United States and in China, with the feminist movements striking the heart of the people, and with the increasing equality of women and men, there is now a greater awareness of the subtle distinctions to be made in the vocabulary choice used to describe men and women, and there is a frequent insistence that neutral words be used as much as possible.
Over the past decades, there have been many attempts to overcome the sexist language use and many counter-sexist-language measures, new categorizations have been created and many modifications have been suggested for old terms. Some have already been adopted. For example, some words like ‘Ms’ and ‘spokesperson’ have, under pressure from the feminist movement, become relatively common way of saying; increasingly, ‘he or she (s/he)’is used generically; in informal usage, many speakers select a plural pronoun to refer to a sex-indefinite pronoun or noun. Reducing linguistic sexism is becoming feasible, but it will take a long time for the new lexical items advocated by the feminists to gain universal acceptance. Besides, there have been guidelines issued either by individuals or government agencies to sensitize language users to the issue of language and gender discrimination, and to offer them a range of alternatives to sexist language practice. Most guidelines are published as booklets or brochures. Some publications have editorial statements encouraging their contributors to use non-sexist language (also known as gender-inclusive language or gender-neutral language or sex-free language or non-discriminatory language or bias-free language). Some authors state their ways of avoiding sexist language either in prefaces or footnotes. Of course, the development of language and writing needs human promotion as well as processes and steps. And adopting the new does not mean the immediate elimination of the old; instead, the new should be popularized. Only under favorable circumstances can the adoption be feasible. Anyway, as women continue to gain recognition in government, commerce, profession and higher education, the process will be accelerated.
V. Conclusion#p#分页标题#e#
As the above refers to, language is the most important way of expressing thoughts, and it reflects the ideas, attitudes, and cultures of the people who develop it and use it. Language tends to reflect social reality and is subjected to the restrictions of people’s living habits, thinking patterns, behavior norms, moral values, political concepts and cultural traditions. Language is regarded as the existing form of thinking. Human beings, no matter what language they speak or no matter where they live, share a great deal of common features both in biological and cultural aspects. These common elements can be referred to as biological and cultural universals, which further may lead to linguistic universals. But through different developments and influenced by the differences of living habits, thinking patterns, behavior norms, moral values, political concepts and cultural traditions, it will also lead to linguistic differences.
This thesis has studied the gender language differences between English and Chinese. It begins from the three similarities of sexism between English and Chinese. From these three main respects, including the living environment, the culture reasons and the social reasons, the author analyzes the reasons which lead to the similarities. Then differences of sexist usages in English and Chinese have also been discussed in the above sections. English and Chinese belongs to different language systems. That leads to the differences of sexism in the two languages. These are the most important parts of this paper. In addition to this, the author also discusses the feasibilities of reducing linguistic sexism.
From this study, the author has drawn the conclusion that eliminating of discrimination against women in English and Chinese is unquestionable. We should pay more attention to the words we use in order to make environment without sexism languages and make the society further progressive.
Language is the most important tool for human communication and thinking, and it reflects the thoughts, attitudes, and cultures of the people who develop it and use it. Human beings use language to communicate ideas and to formulate thoughts as well. Language tends to reflect social reality and is subjected to the restrictions of people’s living habits, thinking patterns, behavior norms, moral values, political concepts and cultural traditions. Language is regarded as the existing form of thinking, even as “the identity card” of thinking. Human beings, whichever language they happen to speak or wherever they happen to live, share a great deal in common both biologically and culturally. These common biological and cultural elements can be referred to as biological and cultural universals. And the universals may lead to linguistic universals. But through different developments and influenced by the differences of living habits, thinking patterns, behavior norms, moral values, political concepts and cultural traditions, they will also lead to linguistic differences.
In ancient society, people lived on hunting and fieldwork. The labor-demanding farm work made male members the leading force of the society gradually. Men soon surpassed women in importance and became the dominant figure in family as well as in society. A patriarchal society has been established since then. This patriarchal society is based on the belief that the male is the superior sex while female is the inferior sex and many of the social institutions and much social practice are then organized in language to reflect the belief. Both English and Chinese have traces in language of discrimination against women.
The study of the sexism in language has been highlighted as a hot issue in the linguistic domain for long. Sexism is controlled both by cultural gender roles and by predominant national culture. With the mixture of different cultures and languages in modern times, there is no doubt that communication can be very complicated and difficult, so cross-cultural and cross-gender issues have increasingly drawn scholars’ attention. In recent years, anthropologists and sociolinguists have carried out many studies in this field. The results stemming from this research can help people to understand better the sexist phenomena in various cultures, which will improve the quality of communication and promote to achieve the harmonious language. Based on the previous research, this thesis is a tentative attempt to analyze the sexism both in Chinese and English from the aspects of similarities and differences, and then to discuss the feasible and effective ways to eliminate sexism in these two languages respectively.
II. Similarities of Sexism Between English and Chinese
Language is used in social contexts; it is used to construct and maintain social relationships between women and men. Each society has its unique geographical and historical framework in which a unique language has been established and developed. As there are no two languages in the world that are identical in every way, there are no two cultures that are same in every aspect. Each language is unique. But this is not to say that there are no similarities between languages. People living in different national boundaries are all human beings living in the same world. There should be in theory and are in reality many similarities among national cultures and languages. These cultural and language similarities reflect the universal aspect of culture and language. In this chapter the author of this thesis will mainly discuss the similarities of sexist usage between English and Chinese.#p#分页标题#e#
2.1 Similarities of Sexist Phenomena in English and Chinese
2.1.1 Sexism in Proverbs
Proverbs are short sayings handed down from generation to generation. They are a mirror of a nation and a living fossil of a language. As a result, the study of them has gained increasing amount of attention of social scientists such as sociologists, anthropologists and sociolinguists. Proverbs often reveal a nation’s moral or ethical principles. The following English and Chinese proverbs have been accepted and used by many people. They reflect social discrimination against women in both English and Chinese cultures.
From the concept of values: Confucius equated women with debased morality when he said that “唯女子与小人难养也，近之则不逊，远之则怨。”（《论语.阳货》 第十七章）(Only women and the morally debased were difficult to support). And Shakespeare said in his famous“Hamlet”:“Frailty, the name is woman.”(弱者，你的名字是女人). Other English proverbs showing women are inferior are: A man of straw is worth a woman of gold(稻草男儿抵得金玉女子) . Man, woman and devil are the three degrees of comparison.(男人，妇女和魔鬼，三级差别分贱类). The Chinese counterpart is:
雌不上战场。 沙子打不了墙，女儿养不了娘。
The cause of the misfortune can be also found in women: Sometimes, women’s beauty becomes their fate. Women are said to be the cause of misfortune. In China, women are called红颜祸水. In English, since the time of Adam and Eve, women have been bringing sin into the world. So women are regarded as dangerous. Such proverbs are:
Women are the devil’s net. (女人是魔鬼织的网)
Women are the snares of Satan.（女人是撒旦设下的陷阱）
No war is without a woman. (夫成城，妇倾城)
2.1.2 Unmarked Masculine Nouns but Marked Feminine Nouns
Both in English and Chinese, masculine nouns are usually unmarked, while some feminine nouns are marked. In English, the suffix–ess is used to mark some female nouns, such as actress, princess, heiress. In Chinese square-shaped characters, many words related to females contain the meaning element or radical ‘女’ to mark the female such as ‘妈(mother),姑(auntie),姐（elder sister）’, but the word ‘男’ is not used as a meaning element or radical. The absence of a specific masculine radical in the Chinese writing system results in a gender asymmetry similar to that in English, implying man is the norm, i.e., equated with human beings in general. Maybe we can infer that it is because God made the first man ‘Adam’ before he made the first woman ‘Eve’ from Adam’s rib. Consequently, when it comes to the creation of writing, the creators followed the order that God made Adam and Eve. When adding the suffix-ess to form other feminine nouns is infeasible, the creators put a feminine noun in front of the other nouns as a mark. So, if a male takes the position of doctor or judge, he is referred to as ‘doctor’ or ‘judge’, but if a female happens to be a doctor or judge, she is marked as ‘woman doctor’ or ‘woman judge’. Similarly, in Chinese, if a male takes the position of doctor or judge, he is referred to as “医生”、“法官”, but if a female does the same job, she is marked as“女医生”、“女法官”.#p#分页标题#e#
2.1.3 Word Order
In both Chinese and English, word order reflects the sex-bias against women. When men and women are presented together, usually men are given precedence and listed before women It is said that that it was more natural to place man before woman, as in male and female, husband and wife, brother and sister; son and daughter. Some linguists assume that people are used to follow a “good to bad” order when arranging word orders, such as “good-bad”, “rich-poor”, “day-night”, “light-dark”, “big-small”. The arrangement of “man-woman” follows the same rule, implying that men are better than women, or a traditional idea in China—男尊女卑(Men enjoy higher status than women). Though this assumption sounds too extreme, it reminds us of the possible negative influences that the word order might have on people’s thinking. Let’s see the following examples in English: man and woman, boy and girl, male and female, brother and sister; husband and wife, father and mother; In China, as idiom shows, husband is the authority in a family and is usually put in the first place. The common male-female patterns like“夫妇，夫妻，男女，父母，公婆，叔婶，兄嫂，弟妹，夫贵, 妻荣”, etc. But there is an exception in English, we say “Ladies and gentlemen”, but we almost never say “Gentlemen and ladies”. To this conception, it may be because of the traditional custom of “lady first”.
2.2 Reasons for the Similarities of Sexism Between English and Chinese
2.2.1 The Living Environment
The sexual inequality is rooted within the society itself. Family constitutes the basic unit of society and each home exists as a state in miniature. Discrimination against women is deeply rooted in the structure of society----in the rules women play, and in the sexual division of labor which restricts females primarily to the domestic sphere of life. Thus, the patriarchal family becomes the cornerstone----the basic social unit.
The earliest tradition affecting the role of the man and woman is that of the hunting age. In primitive society women had the task of gathering the vegetable/fruit/root part of the diet while men had the task of gathering the meat. Compared with hunting, gathering was easier. Very often the hunters would return home with nothing, while women would certainly brought home some vegetables and fruits for diet. Besides, women had the major responsibility to bear and rear children, which maintained the extending of the society. Therefore, in gathering-hunting time, women played a more important role in the productivity.
Women’s contribution to the food supply contributed to the matriarchy system. However, with the discovery of the cause-effect relationship between seed planting and harvest, and the invention of the plow, eventually the hunting society yielded to the agricultural society. Because the farm work required great physical strength and endurance, men gradually took leading roles in the food production process. Typically, women’s farm work was only that of a helpmate. Women became increasingly dependent upon men although they still played important roles in childbearing and childrearing and in food preparation. As such, their dependency increased, and their status decreased. One of the new features in agricultural society was the need to possess a given land. The eldest male, the patriarch, held the land and his sons would inherit the land and the status. Women were robbed of land and property, and then had to be dependent on men for food and shelter. In addition, women possessed no political rights and were completely excluded from social and political life. It then became a tradition that men work outside maintaining prime responsibility for the economic survival of the household while women stay home doing‘trivial’housework. The Chinese phrase“男耕女织”(men till the land and women wove at home) clearly shows us the picture of agricultural society. Eventually, with technology expanded, industrial society evolved. Although the beginnings of industrialization brought some women into cottage industries, the middlemen who provided the raw materials only employed them. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries brought the challenge of industrialization, which had profound impact on men’s roles. Until the nineteenth century, work and home life were one; the family functioned as a center for economic production as well as the primary source for meeting its members’ needs. For most people, work and home, family members and work colleagues, and daily life were in the same place----the family household. Decreased infant mortality rates and increased awareness of the importance of child rearing led to an emphasis on man as breadwinner and woman as mother/housewife. With the rising population, more and more persons became land-less, and therefore, the working-class businessman became the new hunter. Business as battle, a man fights, campaigns. As the development of industrialization, there has been a shift from the private patriarchal within the family to public patriarchy centered in industry and government.#p#分页标题#e#
With regard to marriage the girl was just as much a pawn in the hands of her family as was the man, which is showed in the Chinese character for a wife----妻. Monogamous marriage develops as part of the formation of private property. Particularly in the rich family, the development of private property creates the need to determine lineage for the purpose of inheritance. There existed monogamy for women while polygamy for men. Both in Western countries and in China, in feudal times, it was always the king, not the queen, who ruled the country. In the oriental countries, especially in China, a king not only had the queen as his wife he might have hundreds and even thousands of concubines. It was usual for a man to have several wives at the same time. Women were only considered as his possession or sex object. In ancient China, women could even be exchanged in the markets like private objects or animals.
As men’s private property, women’s status was very lowly. As the society’s natural and necessary institution, the family has defined women’s function as sexual, procreative, and child-rearing machine. Girls were less valued than boys; women were unable to inherit and therefore did not become owners of the land; though they maybe had more voices in family decisions, were ultimately subject, especially when young, to the authority of men. Such, very generally, was woman’s place in the traditional family and society.
Likewise, modern family is a sociological phenomenon that is a consequence of cultural changes based on equality. The custom of women working primarily as homemakers is rapidly changing also; in our society, women employed outside the home outnumber full-time homemakers. This is a response to cultural changes as small families, the economic pressures and high costs of rearing and educating children, the development of laborsaving devices and convenience foods, the raising of self-consciousness of women, as well as a reflection of the change in male-female relationships. Nevertheless, most still believe that the husband’s career is primary and the wife’s career is secondary to the needs of the family and to the husband’s career decisions. In modern marriage, the male is still dominant but not as strongly as in the past. The spouses may do housekeeping chores together, take turns, or divide tasks according to skill and interest. However, no matter who does what, in the most of the families, the wife still carries the responsibility for domestic tasks and man, invests in his career. The wife’s primary role is to care for the home and children. The husband’s primary role is still that of breadwinner. If possible, the wife does not work outside the home, since this would reflect negatively on her husband and would undermine her primary work as wife and mother. If she does work outside the home, it is usually due to financial necessity and is considered a stopgap measure rather than a career.
Both traditional family and modern family as we have described are rooted in the hierarchical society. A pattern where fathers arrange marriages and pass control of their daughters over to the complete authority of their husbands, where wives are defined in their homes, and also is agreed with the Biblical hierarchical ideal and traditional Chinese ethic as well.#p#分页标题#e#
2.2.2 The Cultural Reasons
The culture decides the way of people’s value. Although the English-spoken countries and China have different cultures, there exists the same vision to the female.
2.2.2.1 The Female Imagery in the West
Woman as a source of danger, as a represent of evil, is an image that runs through patriarchic history. Since she is depicted as the source of sin and evil, her subjection is seen as her justified desert. From the very beginning of Greek literature, a strong discrimination against women is obvious. From the heroic to the classical age, the status of women was not improved, and this was especially true of classical Athens. The narrowly defined function of women as children bearers and housekeepers was well recorded in classical Greek literature. Marriage to a woman was primarily for a economic consideration; girls were not educated: they only learned the arts of housekeeping; Women were confined in household and were denied access to all those places where men discussed and learned about civic and intellectual affairs-----the gymnasia, the market place, the law courts; even the highest emotion was considered between the male sex in the homosexual culture of Greek aristocracy. While the monogamous sexuality was not imposed on men, the worst possible crime a woman could commit was unfaithfulness to her husband. Even if her husband died, a woman had no control over her life or her body. According to Genesis, it is man that created the world and then named the world. Woman was created just as a helpmate for man. And she was not created until all other animals failed to meet the need of the man. The woman was made of a rib of the man and therefore she was destined to be the appendage of man. And the name woman, according to the Bible, simply means that “she was taken from men”. This myth illustrates an attitude fundamental in man’s view of woman: She is limited to being his mate, just as Eve is for Adam, instead of taking up her own task of becoming an individual woman. From all these above the superiority of men and inferiority of women is clearly seen.
In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve saw that they were naked because they had eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And God asked:“Who told you that you were naked?” Eve said: “It’s a snake”. There is an inherent bias in interpreting Adam’s eating of the apple as a sign of his strength and superiority, and the woman Eve is branded as a dangerous irresistible temptress. She was the cause of his downfall and sin and all his miseries, so she Eve (and the female) is associated with evil. She (female) follows the pattern laid down by Eve. This views they express are still deeply embedded in the minds of human beings and had unseen and unrecognized forces to human thoughts in the west.
2.2.2.2 The Female Imagery in the East
The Confucianism in China is the teaching of Confucius (500 B.C.), a system of philosophy and ethics, which is regarded as the Old Testament of the Chinese Bible by some scholars. There was a saying in ancient China that半部论语治平天下(“论语”The Analects of Confucius is the collection of Confucius’ quotations, meaning the knowledge of half of Confucius’ LunYu will enable one to rule the country well).The feudal ethics have a profound impact to Chinese civilization and its teaching and rules have been bound by the whole Chinese nation for thousands of years. In this broad and universal sense, Confucianism is something like a religion. Confucius’ teachings have become the basis of Chinese life. If we say that the Christian teaches a man to be a good man, we also can say the Confucianism teaches a man to be a good citizen and a dutiful son; Christian teaches man to believe in God while the Confucianism teaches man to absolutely obey “Heaven” and Emperor, and filial piety to parents－in Chinese, ZhongXiao(忠孝). In fact, the Three Articles of Faith, called in Chinese the San Kang(三纲)，are three basic duties in Confucianism: first, absolute duty of loyalty to the Emperor; second, filial piety and ancestor-worship; third, absolute submission of the wife to the husband(夫为妻纲).#p#分页标题#e#
Women were naturally inferior to men and all of the Chinese traditional religious moral teachings say so. Obedience was the rule for all the women. Chinese women lived in a state of dependence. As a child, she was to live for her father (在家从父). Although loved, she had, unlike her brothers, to submit to the fearful pain of foot binding. When her parents arranged her marriage, she entered her husband’s household as a stranger and was to live for her husband (出嫁从夫); and, as a widow, she was to live for her son (夫死从子). The Chinese feminine ideal is summed up in this“three obeying” (三从) and“four virtues”(四德). Now what are the four virtues? These are: first womanly character(女德); second, womanly conversation(女言); third, womanly appearance(女容); and lastly, womanly work(女工). Womanly character means not extraordinary talents or intelligence, but modest, chastity and perfect manners. Womanly conversation means not brilliant talk, but refined choice of words, never to use coarse language, to know when to speak and when to stop speaking. Womanly appearance means not beauty of face, but personal cleanliness and faultlessness in dress. Lastly, womanly work means not any special skill or ability, but hard work to do cleaning, cooking, sewing and so on, never to waste time in laughing and gossip.
2.2.3 The Social Reasons
In the society, there exist different kinds of discriminations against women. As language reflects social reality, the author will trace linguistic sexism to social factors through the major aspect: education.
The vast majority of women lived in ignorance and seclusion. Women had long been deprived of the access to education in history in China. Traditionally only a minority of families sent children to school. Education spending was regarded as an investment for the future, for an educated boy might get on in the world and in doing so increase his family’s prosperity. There was little incentive to make such sacrifices for girls who would leave their own families on marriage. Her parents might well bring her up with some reluctance－in the southeast of China, for instance, the Cantonese and Hokkiens referred to their daughters as “goods on which one loses his capital”, the point being that it cost money and effort to raise and train a girl only for all the investment to be handed over to her husband’s family when she married. The girl began to share in the housework and baby-minding responsibilities at a very young age, while her brothers were allowed a much longer, much free childhood. The boy went to school if he was fortunate, but girl rarely had such an opportunity. Young girl as a female would throughout her life be seen as less important and less valuable than a male. To make women accept their inferiority identity, the feudal rules tried every means to keep them ignorant. Women were excluded from education and were for the most part condemned to illiteracy. Their illiteracy rate reached over 90%.The whole training of a daughter by her family was aimed at fitting her to be a wife, mother and worker for another family. Of course, some rich families expected their daughters to acquire literacy in addition to such ladylike skills as household management, embroidery, and sewing. The texts provided for the Chinese women, of which the“four books for women”(女四书，including“女诫”，“女论语”，“内训”，“女范”)are the best known examples, were attempts to teach Confucian decorum (礼教) and the ideal of submissive femininity. By the end of the 19th century no schools opened to women. According to data, the first private school for women in China was set up by Westerners in 1884 in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province; in December 1887, Kang Guangren, a bourgeois democrat, opened a women’s school in Shanghai, the first of its kind established by a Chinese. But these girls’ schools did not have much influence on women themselves because only a few of richer families sent their daughters to school. In fact, it was the Reform Movement of 1898 that ignited the wave to forbid foot binding and establish schools for women. Being illiterate, women in feudalistic China took obey as a merit and their“no-self”identity as being intended by“Heaven”, as the common phrase“女子无才便是德”implies. As a result of their poor education, the writings of those women were not good and often became an object of mockery. “女人头发多见识短”and“妇人之见”all implicate women’s supposed low intelligence. Such women were regarded as“绣花枕头”(A pillow with a beautiful embroidered case outside but stuffed with a lot of straw; or having a attractive appearance, but with rubbish inside) in Chinese.#p#分页标题#e#
The situation was much the same in the most of the Western countries. Women were simply regarded as being intellectually inferior and incapable of great thoughts. Custom did not permit girls to be educated, to work, or to have social activities. Women have traditionally been discouraged from studying the holy Bible or even learning Hebrew. Their only aspiration was marriage and family. A woman’s education comprised only those needleworks and dancing----traditionally deemed sufficient for a young woman to catch a husband, run a home and bring up children. A married woman could only darn socks, sew, cook, clean and take care of her man and her children. The account in Genesis of Eve’s tempting Adam with an apple and leading him into original sin was a constant reminder of their inferiority identity. Some “experts” even went so far as to argue that too much use of a woman’s brain would damage her reproductive organs and thus endanger her vital childbearing function. F .W. Nietzsche said, “When a woman inclines to learning, there is usually something wrong with her sex apparatus.” Dr Johnson said, “A man is better pleased when he has a good dinner on the table than when his wife talks Greek.” There was a great common pressure upon women to engage in intellectual pursuits. The schooling of the Christian girl generally went no further than teaching her to read so that she could know the Scriptures. Beyond that, schooling was thought to be useless or even harmful to girls. Colonial American schools in 1700s did not provide education for girls in any significant way. Those illiterate American women in the 18th century even took their inferior identity for granted and believed that they were destined by nature to be the mother of the race and they would gladly accept the doctrine that “The Gods…have plainly adapted the nature of women for work and duties within doors, and that of man for work and duties without doors…”and “Home is, and ever will be, woman’s primal kingdom.”
III Differences of Sexism Between English and Chinese
3.1 Ideographic Language and Alphabetic Language
English and Chinese are two different languages and have different language systems.
In the Chinese language the relation between written and spoken forms is less close than in English. In Chinese, the written language is largely ideographic and can be read quite independently of the spoken language. In Chinese, each character is viewed as a unique picture and can have immediate or direct access to meaning. Memorization comes easily. Because reading involves visual input, characteristics of the visual system do affect the reading process.
Another advantage of Chinese characters is that it is easier to classify of a large number of items. For example, being a radical “足” means leg, so all the followings characters“跳，跑，蹦，跃” are all related to “足”.#p#分页标题#e#
The third and the most important advantage of the Chinese language is that it is an analytical system, that is, every character has a metaphor meaning. It may suggest pictographs like “shui” 水 for water, “huo” 火 for fire, “ren” 人 for peple. A woman and a son is “hao” 好，the character‘ren’人(man) repeated three times众, since“three is a crowd.” As Glahn(1973)observes, “Such a language is already half way to poetry.”
So compared with English, Chinese ideographical characters give us stronger visual stimulus than the alphabet English upon our thoughts; some“nǚzi pang(female radical“女”)”such as“妇，妻，妾，妃”and“好”more clearly and explicitly give pictures of women’s low status in family and society; there are more vocatives to address woman in ancient China such as“贱内，贱人，糟糠，内人，内助，内主，奴家，贱妾，卑妾，老婆，婆娘，家里的，屋里的，做饭的，烧火的，孩子他娘”and so forth. While in English there is only one equivalence“wife”; in English there is only one word for the legal union of a man and woman as husband and wife－that is“marry”, either“John is going to marry Jane”or“Jane married John”is all OK. But in Chinese, there are two words for“marry a person”:“嫁”，meaning give somebody(esp. one’s daughter)in marriage(to a man), offer her as a wife, marry off;“娶”，meaning take somebody(a woman)in marriage. So the Chinese language more clearly reflects the nature of marriage of the patriarchal society―mercenary marriage(买卖婚姻).
3.2 Isolating Language and Reduced Inflecting Language
It has been claimed that English is an inflecting language and Chinese is an isolating or monosyllabic language. Grammatical patterns and rules operate differently in each language. Since one character by itself represents one morpheme, its perception should be wholistic. The Chinese word for “mountain”,“山”(shan),is one syllable, and one character. One character may consist of several strokes (three in shan), but the strokes do not have individual semantic and phonetic functions, as do English letters or letter groups. By contrast, an English word consists of a number of subunits, each of which has a semantic and/or phonetic function. Consider mountains. It consists of two morphemes, 2 syllables, 7 phonemes, and 9 letters, while each Chinese character is processed not stroke by stroke but as a whole visual pattern. At most, reading English is sometimes from small to large units, that is, from letters to words; while reading Chinese, each character may be analyzed according to its radical and phonetic.
Although a conclusion can be arrived that English and Chinese can be equally used to convey meanings, the obligatory explicit grammatical markers are larger in number in English than in Chinese and they are used more frequently in English than in Chinese. As to gender issue, the notion of man is unmarked category and woman is the marked category in English. This is reflected in pairs of words that are distinguished by gender. When a word referring to a person is distinguished by gender, the feminine form is often marked with a suffix, which at times carries the sense of a diminutive or negative. Mistress, for example, seems to have connotations of lower status. Also, Women’s professions and titles are sometimes indicated by adding derivational morphemes such as“-ess” or “-ette”, and then yield pairs such as#p#分页标题#e#
actor/actress
governor/governess
In cases where formal marking simply signals the feminine form (as in governess), this is also semantically marked. The masculine term is formally unmarked and also normally semantically unmarked. The unmarked form can refer to men or whole human beings in general(as in lawyer; worker; schoolmaster).When a speaker wishes to refer to a professor regardless of sex “professor” tends to be used; while referring to female, “female professor” tends to be used. Similarly with terms referring to a mayor, “mayor” tends to be used as both a male referring and a sex-neutral term; while referring to female, “female mayor” or “woman mayor” tends to be used. If terms such as mayor; doctor; schoolmaster make us think only of males, then terms with-man are even more likely to do so. A great many words are constructed by the addition of man. How many women are likely to apply for jobs when advertisements proclaim the employer is looking for a salesman, dustman, fireman or sportsman? It seems that there is a systematic basis to linguistic discrimination against women in English. The structures of language itself－its vocabulary and grammar―discriminate against women. The words, word forms and meanings made this discrimination against women, and made women semantically invisible or semantically degraded. This is no worse than women having to live with the feeling that they are permanent exceptions to a male (supposed human being) form. To return to our focus on man and the relationship between lexis and perception or thought, we will now examine man and other so-called generic-masculine words in context. Studies have been undertaken, mostly by social psychologists, to test the extent that usage of the so-called generic man causes male bias in thought. Research in psychology does show that thought is affected by language, that mental imagery is different according to whether -man suffix/person or suffix/no words are used and also the negative effects of-man compounds upon visual judgments.
Using “man” to mean both the male human and all human is confusing. The lexicon of the English language makes it difficult to express women’s experiences. Chinese logographic writing, on the other hand, with its combination of determinative and phonetic, does not know this problem. In Chinese there is a character“人” (ren) referring to the whole human being, both male and female, the problems seem to be avoided. While the problems with the job titles in Chinese are similar to those identified in English. It seems that job titles are only applied to men except for a few jobs such as nurse, secretary and elementary teacher. You cannot add a suffix to express the gender. If a woman is doing a job，“女”(woman)is usually added to the normal title, e.g.“女运动员，女律师，女司机，女市长，政治局常委(女).”
IV. Feasibilities of Reducing Linguistic Sexism#p#分页标题#e#
Language is a result of previous development and at the same time the starting-point of subsequent development. And language, as a social phenomenon, tends to reflect social reality. With the change of politics, economy, education, science and technology, and people’s ideology, the majority of positions originally exclusive to men, such as leadership positions, science-and-technology-related positions, medicine-related positions, education positions, are just as likely to be held by women as by men or vice versa. So linguistic change might be expected to follow. Additionally, some legislative measures have contributed to the creation and adoption of non-discriminatory terminology. For instance, laws dealing with equality between sexes and equal employment opportunity affect the use of job titles and occupational terminology. In Britain, the United States and in China, with the feminist movements striking the heart of the people, and with the increasing equality of women and men, there is now a greater awareness of the subtle distinctions to be made in the vocabulary choice used to describe men and women, and there is a frequent insistence that neutral words be used as much as possible.
Over the past decades, there have been many attempts to overcome the sexist language use and many counter-sexist-language measures, new categorizations have been created and many modifications have been suggested for old terms. Some have already been adopted. For example, some words like ‘Ms’ and ‘spokesperson’ have, under pressure from the feminist movement, become relatively common way of saying; increasingly, ‘he or she (s/he)’is used generically; in informal usage, many speakers select a plural pronoun to refer to a sex-indefinite pronoun or noun. Reducing linguistic sexism is becoming feasible, but it will take a long time for the new lexical items advocated by the feminists to gain universal acceptance. Besides, there have been guidelines issued either by individuals or government agencies to sensitize language users to the issue of language and gender discrimination, and to offer them a range of alternatives to sexist language practice. Most guidelines are published as booklets or brochures. Some publications have editorial statements encouraging their contributors to use non-sexist language (also known as gender-inclusive language or gender-neutral language or sex-free language or non-discriminatory language or bias-free language). Some authors state their ways of avoiding sexist language either in prefaces or footnotes. Of course, the development of language and writing needs human promotion as well as processes and steps. And adopting the new does not mean the immediate elimination of the old; instead, the new should be popularized. Only under favorable circumstances can the adoption be feasible. Anyway, as women continue to gain recognition in government, commerce, profession and higher education, the process will be accelerated.
V. Conclusion#p#分页标题#e#
As the above refers to, language is the most important way of expressing thoughts, and it reflects the ideas, attitudes, and cultures of the people who develop it and use it. Language tends to reflect social reality and is subjected to the restrictions of people’s living habits, thinking patterns, behavior norms, moral values, political concepts and cultural traditions. Language is regarded as the existing form of thinking. Human beings, no matter what language they speak or no matter where they live, share a great deal of common features both in biological and cultural aspects. These common elements can be referred to as biological and cultural universals, which further may lead to linguistic universals. But through different developments and influenced by the differences of living habits, thinking patterns, behavior norms, moral values, political concepts and cultural traditions, it will also lead to linguistic differences.
This thesis has studied the gender language differences between English and Chinese. It begins from the three similarities of sexism between English and Chinese. From these three main respects, including the living environment, the culture reasons and the social reasons, the author analyzes the reasons which lead to the similarities. Then differences of sexist usages in English and Chinese have also been discussed in the above sections. English and Chinese belongs to different language systems. That leads to the differences of sexism in the two languages. These are the most important parts of this paper. In addition to this, the author also discusses the feasibilities of reducing linguistic sexism.
From this study, the author has drawn the conclusion that eliminating of discrimination against women in English and Chinese is unquestionable. We should pay more attention to the words we use in order to make environment without sexism languages and make the society further progressive.
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