Sexism in English and Chinese

1、 英語和漢語語言文化中的性別歧視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 Cau

2、ses 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 ChineseSexism in English and ChineseAbstract: The research on sex

3、ism 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

4、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 c

5、omparison 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 wor

6、ds: Sexism; English and Chinese; Languages and Cultures摘要：很久以前就有人對英語中的性別歧視現(xiàn)象進行了研究。二十世紀的二十年代，許多語言學家和社會學家認為英語中的大量詞匯只能單獨用于男性或女性。中國的性別歧視研究是在“五·四”運動跟隨西方女權運動而興起的?；谛詣e的差異而出現(xiàn)的語言歧視，特別是針對女性的現(xiàn)象不僅存在于過去也存在于如今。通過對這一現(xiàn)象的研究不僅能幫助英語學習者更好的了解二者的語言和文化，而且能讓我們受益非淺通過對漢語和英語的對比研究。更重要的是它將有助和諧社會的建立。因此，越來越多的語言學家和社會學家投入到這項工作

7、中。這篇問章將從對比的角度討論漢語和英語語言、文化中的性別歧視。關鍵詞：性別歧視； 英語和漢語； 語言和文化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 discr

8、imination 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

9、 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

10、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

11、 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

12、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 w

13、oman 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

14、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 devel

15、opment of Confucian theory, woman has to face more and more inequality, such as Concubinage and Footbinding.In the next place, “l(fā)anguage 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 stud

16、y 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 t

17、hese 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 u

18、p 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

19、 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

20、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 th

21、e 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 “g

22、enus” 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 lan

23、guage”. 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.

24、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 o

25、f 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 catego

26、ry 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 th

27、e 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 pub

28、lished. 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 nee

29、d 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 incomplet

30、e, 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. Exc

31、ept 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 Soci

32、olinguistic 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 s

33、exism in English while treat it as a subject of sociolinguistics, they manage to explain the phenomena of sexism through “l(fā)inguistic 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

34、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 wo

35、men. 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 meanin

36、g 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 cert

37、ain 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 attrib

38、uted 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) zhu

39、an 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)

40、, 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

41、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 G

42、rowth 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

43、 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 concep

44、tually 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 co

45、mmunicate 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 term

46、s 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, jin

47、g 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 rema

48、rry) but it has no zhen nan (chastity man) and jie nan (widower who does not remarry). This illustrates that in terms of sexual relationships, restraints are only imposed on women. A man can remarry after the death of his wife, and his new wife is then called tian fang or xu xian (a woman who marrie

49、s a widower). But there are no corresponding wife-centered characters in Chinese in this regard; as a result, it is difficult to describe the man who marries a widow. An ancient Chinese teaching says that “there are three unfilial acts, and no posterity is the greatest”. “No posterity” does not mean

50、 that one has no children. It means that one has no boys who will carry on the family name and inherit the family property. The male-dominant tendency of modern Chinese is characterized by disyllabic or polysyllabic words, words of two or more characters that are combined together to create a new me

51、aning. These words are quite conspicuous and sexist examples are everywhere. Many words are aimed at or centered on men. For example, words like fa guan (judge), sheng zhang (governor), ke xue jia (scientist), xiao zhang (principal), bu zhang (minister), jiang jun (general), and zong tong (president

52、) are specially created for men. In most cases, these words are used to refer to male rather than female. If they are used to refer to women, the character or morpheme nü (female) must be placed before the words, thus nü fa guan refers to a woman judge, and nü ke xue jia refers to a w

53、oman scientist. This is similar to the English practice in which one can find phrases such as woman lawyer, female president, and so on. In English, there are also one-word equivalents, such as the use of “waitress” and “actress” to specify a female waiter and actor. Strictly speaking, neither term

54、is necessary; a waiter is one who waits (serves at a table in a restaurant) and an actor is one who acts, and the need to specify the waiters or actors sex is very revealing. Among China ,US and UK, important positions are most often held by men instead of women. The linguistic traces of this phenom

55、enon, such as those in this paragraph, illustrate that human society has been dominated by men for the thousands of years and linguistic evolution that led to these words. In modern Chinese (Mandarin), the order of combination of characters involving sex also reflects sexism. Many polysyllabic words

56、 involving a persons sex are formed by placing characters that denote male before characters that denote female. For example, nan nü lao shao (man and women, old and young), nan nan nü nü (group of men and women), fu qi (husband and wife), sheng er yü nü (bear and bring up s

57、ons and daughters), sun nan sun nü (grandsons and grandaughters), er nü (sons and daughters). The order is by no means to be changed because it would sound odd to the Chinese reader, and in some cases would even change the meaning. For example, er nü means sons and daughters while nü er means only daughters. In English one can find similar collocations, such as the phrase “man and wife”. This word order cannot be arbitrarily reversed in English either. Thi