Sexism in English and Chinese英语专业毕业论文.doc

英语和汉语语言文化中的性别歧视Sexism in English and Chinese ContentsAbstract. 1 Key words1I. Introduction2 II. Different Views about Sexism.3III. Sexism in Languages 5 1. Sexism in word-formation rules.52. Sexism in the lexicon6 IV. Sexism in Social Life71. Sexism in names .7 2. Sexism in place names.8 V. The Causes of Sexism in English and Chinese.9 1. Historical factors9 2. Physiological and psychological factors.10 3. Cultural factors .10 VI. The Desexism in the English and Chinese.11 VII. Conclusion .11 References 12 Sexism in English and ChineseAbstract: The research on sexism in English can be traced to a long time ago. In the 1920s many linguistics and socialists have put forward this view that there were so many words in English that can only be used for male or female. The research on sexism in Chinese just followed woman's rights movement in 1919. Words that show the discrimination based on gender, especially discrimination against women are very common phenomenon not only in past period but also in our time. Studying this issue would help English learners understand both languages and cultures from this aspect. It will also benefit us to focus on the comparison and contrast of these two languages. Furthermore, it helps us establish our harmonious society, hence more and more linguistics and socialists are doing their contributions to such problem. This paper discusses sexism in the two languages and cultures from a comparative perspective.Key words: Sexism; English and Chinese; Languages and Cultures摘要：很久以前就有人对英语中的性别歧视现象进行了研究。二十世纪的二十年代，许多语言学家和社会学家认为英语中的大量词汇只能单独用于男性或女性。中国的性别歧视研究是在“五·四”运动跟随西方女权运动而兴起的。基于性别的差异而出现的语言歧视，特别是针对女性的现象不仅存在于过去也存在于如今。通过对这一现象的研究不仅能帮助英语学习者更好的了解二者的语言和文化，而且能让我们受益非浅通过对汉语和英语的对比研究。更重要的是它将有助和谐社会的建立。因此，越来越多的语言学家和社会学家投入到这项工作中。这篇问章将从对比的角度讨论汉语和英语语言、文化中的性别歧视。关键词：性别歧视； 英语和汉语； 语言和文化I. Introduction Language is the carrier and mirror of culture. All kinds of phenomena, good or bad, can be reflected in it. Firstly, let us find out what sexism is. Webster Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary provides a definition: prejudice or discrimination based on sex; especially discrimination against women. Longman English Dictionary gives another explanation: based on sex, especially man looks down upon female. America Traditional Dictionary gives such a definition: one sex directs the other, esp. man looks down upon female. So, based on the above definitions, “sexism” refers to the gender discriminations against female at the most time.Otto Jesperson, a Danish linguist, in his Growth and Structure of the English Language (1923), pointed out that English is the most masculine language as far as he is concerned. So its necessary to discuss sexism in English.The phenomenon of sexism exists in English. Does it exist in Chinese? Of course, it does. Like other cultures, China has a long history of sexist social conventions, and the Chinese language is pervaded with evidence of sexism. Something in the Chinese tradition never quite gave woman her due from primeval times. The respect for woman, certain tenderness toward the female sex, which was characteristic of the Teutonic races already in their barbaric days, was absent in the early pages of Chinese history. As early as the time of the folk songs, collected in the Book of Poems, there was a gender inequality, for “when a baby boy was born, he was laid on the bed, and given jade to play with, and when a baby girl was born, she was laid on the floor and given a tile to play with.” However, woman was not subjected until she was civilized. The progressive subjection of woman followed pace by pace the increasing development of Confucianism. Confucianism saw that this sexual differentiation was necessary for social harmony. Perhaps, it was quite near the truth or maybe not. And the author of Womans Guide, Pan Chao, was the great exponent of the “Three Obediences and Four Virtues”. The Three Obediences were: when a woman is in her maiden home she obeys her father; when married she obeys her husband; and when her husband dies she obeys her son.” Furthermore, in the Ming Dynasty this doctrine of chaste widowhood became an official institution. Along with the development of Confucian theory, woman has to face more and more inequality, such as Concubinage and Footbinding.In the next place, “language is the mirror of the society.” A language reflects all the aspects of a society. Thus we can understand their unique cultures and languages themselves through study English and Chinese. Meanwhile, language is the carrier of culture. Therefore, to learn their cultures is the most efficient and best way to learn English and Chinese. The sexism is an essential part of culture, to study and compare the sexism in English and Chinese can facilitate our command of these two languages and cultures.II. Different Views about Sexism We can find the earliest trace of sexism in some earlier western works, esp. in the book, Bible, which is regarded as one of the sources and foundation of western literature, as following: The Lord God took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman.” Man was first to be created by God while woman was then made from one of his ribs. From the order of the birth, it is obvious to see the different importance of man and woman. And man and woman are not equal at all because woman is only a part of man, in itself is the discrimination against women. It is said in the Holy Bible that the first sin is also committed by the woman who was seduced by the snake into eating and having the man eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Therefore, woman is always related to the trouble and the wickedness. Holy Bible influences the Western culture and social values so much that it is referred to as the origin of sexism in English. We can find the root of sexism in Bible. But, as a graduate paper we should pay much more attention to its development.Language and gender relations on the first inspection took place in ancient Greece, Rome. As time goes on, people want to explain the definition of “genus” in grammar so they had brought forward such an assumption. The earliest linguists who focused on gender language should be Denmark Jespersen. In 1923 he published The Development and Structure of English, a book in which he said: “English is the language most familiar to me and is a gender language”. He thought that English is the most masculine language. In his another book, Language we can find a whole chapter entitled “Women's Language”, but we can not correspondingly find the "male language" sections, which clearly implies that a standard for comparison: male language. So from the very beginning, we put the male language as a standard. There is a whole chapter describing the characters of female language in this book. Through the contrast and comparison between male language and female language in English, he indicated that there are obvious differences in usage of vocabulary and sentences. For instance, Euphemism is used much more in female language than in males. Actually, during that period of time, the research on sexism in English is scattered and unsystematic. The research itself being depreciated, prevailly male language was treated as standard category meanwhile female a hypotaxis. Through studying the achievement of sexism in English in this special period, we can see how sexism, as phenomena of human society, be treated in the early time and what conclusion the ancient scholar made, it is important for our further research.In the middle of the 20th century, sociolinguistics as an periphery science of linguistic and sociology has developed. Statistical method which had been used by sociologist has been borrowed to investigate the characters of language; the effect of the differences of peoples gender, age and job on language had been published. So in this period of time sociolinguists raised a hypothesis that female language was more conservative. In 1978, Academy of Sciences of American had published a book on sociolinguistics named Language, Sex and Gender: A Meaningful Difference. In the prologue of this book they raised the need to establish “Sexual Linguistics”. R. Lakoff, a British scholar and a representative of this theory, published his books Language and Social Position of Women in which he pointed out that the languages of the world reflect that men are the center of the society, and the image of women is incomplete, trying to use all the scientific knowledge about people to give a perfect linguistics description, it involves Psychology, Sociology, Ethnology, Anthropology, History and many other fields. The results of his research also affect the success of certain language in the formulation of policies. Except R. Lakoff, there are some scholars holding such a viewpoint, including, P. Trudgill, Zimmerman and S.Tromel-Plotz.Dr. Yang Yonglin, a famous Chinese linguist, has also done a great contribution to research on sexism in English and Chinese. In 2004, Yang Yonglin published his book A Study of Sociolinguistic Issues, he considered that the research of sexism in English can be divided into four stages: enlightenment stage (60s, 20th century); all the people participant stage (70s, 20thcentury); science research stage (80s, 20thcentury); in the fourth stage, scholars began to try to study the sexism in English while treat it as a subject of sociolinguistics, they manage to explain the phenomena of sexism through “linguistic relativity”. In order to make his view more clear, he used Chinese to compare with English in his book. Although that book is not a monograph on sexism in English and Chinese, we can say that his work paves a way for us to do this research from across-culture aspect. He also gives us an good example to study sexism in English and Chinese.III. Sexism in Languages1. Sexism in word-formation rulesThe way of forming Chinese words reflect sex discrimination against women. Most Chinese words are formed using a pictographic method. They consist of two elements, one of which indicates meaning; the other, which is the radical, indicates the sound (in Chinese, a tonal language, the same word has different meanings when pronounced differently) or the sex of the meaning word. A great many characters with the female radicle have derogatory, negative or distasteful meanings and carry sexual connotations. For example, chang (prostitute), jian (rape), and ji (prostitute) all have a radical nü (female). Other characters that use the radicle nü reflect a certain psychology in a derogatory way. These characters include ji (jealous) and lan (greedy). Characters denoting bad or ugly things also carry a nü radical. These characters include nü (slave), yao (demon), and chi (ugly). Obviously, when ancient people created these characters, they attributed ugliness and evil to women. In Chinese, occupational terms are mostly constructed by adding a gender-neutral suffix such as yuan, ren, or jia onto the end of a word that names the activity or sphere that the job involves. For example, jiao yuan (teacher), zuo jia (writer), hai yuan (sailor) zhuan jia (expert), jia shi yuan (driver), fei xing yuan (pilot), yan yuan (actor), gong ren (worker), zhu ren (master), jun ren (soldier) have such suffixes. If they are used to refer to women, the prefix nü must be added, thus nü zuo jia (a woman writer), nü zhuang jia (a woman expert), nü yan yuan (a woman actor), nü jun ren (a woman soldier), and nü zhu ren (a woman master). These Chinese compounds are unmarked but are most often assumed to be male in actual use. They take on masculine connotation in the male-dominated Chinese culture. One needs not be surprised by these male-dominant occupational terms. Before Chinas Reform and Opening up, 95% of the important positions were held by men, and in Chinas five thousand years of history, only one empress had supreme power. English word-formation rules also reflect this discrimination against women. In his The Growth and Structure of the English Language, Jesperson says: “English is the most positively and expressively masculine of the languages”. English words such as chairman, mankind, and postman include the male part. Some female terms are formed from the male terms by adding endings such as -ess, such as actress, waitress, and mistress (the female form of “master”). Other words are softened or diminished by adding a female -ette ending, such as sermonette (a small sermon) and cigarette (a small cigar). This linguistic habit of forming words both in Chinese and English shows that women are conceptually viewed by both oriental and occidental societies as less important and less typical. Thus, the word root is used, by default, to communicate the concept of a male in a given role, and for the unusual case where a woman fills that role, an adjective or other modifier is added to the word to communicate this unusual situation.2. Sexism in the lexiconChinese has many depreciatory terms of address, a lot of which are directed at women. A man can call his wife nei ren; nei zi; zhao jing; jian nei etc., whereas there is no corresponding depreciatory terms for husbands. These depreciatory terms of address indicate the womens status at home. Nei ren (a person at home) means a person can only stay at home without freedom of movement or engaging in political and social activities. Jian nei illustrates the lower status of a woman as jian means “humble and lowly” in Chinese. In zhuo jing, jing is from jing chai (thorn hairpin), meaning a woman who is very poor as she uses a thorn as her hairpin. Chinese characters such as zhen (chastity) and jie (virginity) are specially prepared for women. Chinese has zhen fu (chastity woman) and jie fu (widow who remains her chastity and does not remarry) but it has no zhen nan (chastity man) and jie nan (widower who does not remarry). This illustrates that in terms of sexual rel