A Probe Into Sexism In Vocabulary

The study of language in relation to gender has remained a heated topic in linguistics. Those who show interest in this field are traditionally divided into two groups according to their research emphasis. One group laid their emphasis on the speech difference between women and men. Many linguists have observed that men and women speak differently. The examples they give are: women tend to be more polite, tentative and less confident, and tend to use "empty" words such as adorable, divine, cute and tag questions in their speech, especially when they are talking directly with men. No matter whether they actually do so or not, what is not made clear is why these words are considered "empty". The reason tends to be that they are employed by women rather than by men. In a sense, the study of this group supports the view that there do exist some elements that are biased against women to reveal their inferiority in the language. The other group of linguists has observed that men and women are spoken differently and it is often claimed that language is discriminatory against women. It is affirmative that sexist ideology against women can be expressed by individual language users via words in specific context. Many linguists think that English as a sexist language is marked with distinctive sexist factors, among which the lexis is the most important aspect(顾嘉祖, 2002). The famous linguist and feminist, Dale Spender (1985) has also pursued the idea that there exist lexical gaps in the language aspects of women's lives which are commonplace, but...