A Comparative Analysis Of Sexism In English And Chinese

Language created by people through production and social practice is the most important tool for human communication and thinking, and it reflects the thoughts, the attitudes, and the cultures of the people who make it and use it and serves their purposes. Sociolinguistics, which has grown since the late 1960s, concerns about the study of the variety of language related to many different kinds of social factors. Sexism, derived from racism, has been an old and heated topic throughout the world as a sub-branch of gender variety of language. Sexism is a kind of discrimination by one sex against another, especially by males against females, which has been a major topic for linguists who have studied gender and language recently.The thesis will combine the achievements in language studies thus far made in China and English-speaking countries to reveal sexism existing in language itself and behind language. A comparative approach is employed as a general framework of the research work. There are five chapters to discuss the issue. Chapter One will distinguish gender from sex, give the definition of sexism, and introduce the studies of sexism in language at home and aboard. Chapter Two will make an elaborate comparison of sexism in English and Chinese at the lexical, syntactic structure and further discourse level. Particularly, at the word level, not only men are taken as norm and women as the appendage, e.g. the generic man can be used to as male and even the human race: male words more often have positive connotations, conveying notions of power, prestige and leadership; in contrast, female words more often bear negative connotations, conveying weakness, inferiority and immaturity; When men and women are presented together, usually male words are given precedence over women. e.g. 'father and mother (父母)'. However, isolated words are not convincing enough to verify a fact. Therefore it is necessary for us to give a detailed analysis. As for the syntactic structure, more women use modal verbs to express a state of uncertainty or tactful proposal, and men employ the modal verbs with higher authority. Women tend to use tag questions, while men use statements or imperative sentences to express a self-confidence and reliability. At the discourse level, the writer of the thesis will reveal ideology of sexism existing in the discourses in our daily life theory of System Functional Grammar and the theory of Discourse Analysis, through which we can capture the idea that the content of linguistic control on women is primarily ideological rather than linguistic items in the sense that biased messages are transmitted about the way people should be. The theory of take-turning and interruption will be employed to illustrate the topic. After a presentation of sexism in language and behind the language, chapter three will trace the causes of sexism from the perspective of society, history and culture. Chapter four will discuss the strategies and methods of coping with sexism through language planning and ideology changing to achieve linguistic equality between men and women. Meanwhile the thesis proposes the feasibilities of reducing sexist language and restrictions of eliminating sexist language with the scientific and objective attitudes to avoid exaggerating sexism subjectively. Chapter Five will draw a conclusion that gender discrimination has been consciously and unconsciously rooted deep in people's linguistic habits and we do need to face it and overcome it as soon as possible.The writer hopes the thesis can arouse people's awareness of negative effect brought about by sexism in language and reduce its control over females by means of language. Language is conventional. There is a long way to go to "eliminate" sexism in language. The writer also points out that the joint efforts from both social and linguistic workers are required. At present, there are two things that should and could be done. One is, from the social aspect, to educate the social members to be conscious of the harm of sexism and try not to use sex-biased languages so that each does his or her own bit to build language harmony and social harmony. The other is, for linguistic workers, to further the studies about sexism and to spot the questions so as to pave the way for formulating neutralized alternatives.