语言学论文

The sexism similarities in English and Chinese Abstract Language is the forms of social culture and the carrier of human’s civilization. It can reflect the social ways of thinking and values. The sexism languages specifically reflect of the inequalities towards men and women in the society. Being the production of human beings’ civilizations, English and Chinese share many similarities at the aspect. The two languages show their own features when words are invented and used. Human beings’ civilization mainly was developed in the paternal society but not the maternal society, so languages is influenced deeply by this social element. The sexism similarities in the two languages will be illustrated in three ways: 1 the use of the third personal pronoun for women; 2 the construction of words; 3 the order to describe a man and a woman at the same time. Key words: sexism; Chinese; English Introduction In the 21st century, women’s social status has gradually been improved at a higher level, but women really suffered a lot from the sexism in many aspects in the feudal society both in the eastern countries and in western countries. Here I will talk about some similarities of the two languages in sexism. Many researches have studied in the connection between the two languages. 1 the origin of the third personal pronouns: “she” and “她”indicating sexism As the oppressed in ancient, women in china or western countries were treated in an inhuman way. 1.1 The origin of “she” In English, the word” she” appeared in the history stage around 13th century. It means the females’ third personal pronoun is included in the word “he” before 13th century. (杨春 p196) And even nowadays, “he” contains the meaning of man and woman, while “she” only stands for a woman. We can learn that in the long human history women’s social status was covered by men’s. 1.2 the origin of “她” As a Chinese, we are very familiar with the character “她”. It’s a pronoun to stand for a singular woman in Chinese. There is an opposing character “他” to indicate a singular man in Chinese. It just likes the relation between “he” and “she” in English. But do you know when did this character was invented? Before 1918, there was no the character “她” in Chinese vocabulary. At that time, we only used the character “他” to express the third personal pronouns. When we made contact with westerns, we found there was no a corresponding word to translate the word “she”. Under this situation, we Chinese tried many ways to describe it. “他女” “那女的” once were put forward, but the pronunciation sounded not good. Later, people thought “她”, created by Liu bannong in 1917, was the best choice. （杨春 p198）The two cases illustrate that in the male-orientated society, wherever you were in the ancient society, sexism always existed. 2 the construction of words indicating sexism 2.1 The construction of English words When we first contact English, it’s very easy to find many words with the gender information. There are two kinds of words: the marked and the unmarked. Most words just are used to describe men. If you really need it to describe a woman, you must add some marks to remind people, you are women. Marked-ness is an very important concept of contractual linguistic raised by philologists Trubetzkoy and Jakobson in 1930. Many words are added some marks, it could become a word to make up the meaning, for example, count and countess. The later one with the mark -ess , it indicate woman count, because in people’s mind, count is only the symbol of the men. this phenomenon is called gender mark in vocabulary. For example (艾晓明 p234) Unmarked(male) Marked(female) Actor actress author Authoress Count Countess Emperor Empress God Goddess Heir Heiress Hero heroine Host Hostess Poet Poetess Prince Princess waiter Waitress Tailor tailoress 2.2 the Chinese characters with “女” At the very beginning, I should explain the origin of the character “女”. As we have known, the Chinese characters were created by the shape of the things. So did the character “女”. But we should bore in mind that the age creating the character was a female-orientated society. “女” contains no derogatory meaning. When entering in the paternal society, men became the leader of the society. When they invented the new words, they invented many characters with the “女”. Most of them contained the derogatory meanings, for instance, “奸” “奴” “妖” “婪” “妒” “嫉” “妓” “娼”. (杨春 p49)These words were created in paternal society. They owed their dirty desires to women. It is a very clear sexism. 3 the orders of men and women in language Have found that we seem to have a habit to order men and women in a solid way? Yes, we always say father and mother, brother and sister, son and daughter, man and woman and so on while no one will reverse them.（杨春 p49） Of course one exception is the phrase: ladies and gentlemen. Why do we that unconsciously? The reason in the paternal society, the rights of speak is held by men. Men control the media, and then what we can learn from outside is the part men hope us to know. And if women live in the world, they must follow these rules, or you will be eliminated. Conclusion In paper, I have talked the similarities of sexism in Chinese and English in three ways. We could find different languages have many similarities in spite of the cultural difference. Bibliography 1 何佑林，何举纯.普通语言学概论 华中师范大学出版社 2 艾晓明译 Language and Gender: an Introduction 华中师范大学出版社 3 杨春 性别语言研究（the Study of Gender Language） 光明日报出版社 4 刘晓明 英汉性别歧视语与文化渊源 广东教育学院学报 5 穆凤良，李秀萍 英语中的性歧视与中性化 外语与外语教学 6 勒梅琳 社会语言学与英语学习 南开大学出版社 PAGE 1