On Sexism In English Language

Since 1960s, sexism in English language has remained a heated topic for linguists and researchers who are interested in linguistics, and till now it still attracts a lot of linguistic learners to make progress in its study. Based on the previous research and the theories of linguistics, the present thesis makes a tentative study on the causes of sexism. To the author's belief, there are three predominant factors attributing to the issue: cultural mark, social reality, and historical context.Most of all, the present paper makes an attempt to analyze the linguistic features of sexism at different levels, to be more specific, mainly from the perspectives of semantic, lexical, naming and addressing system and proverbs and idioms. As far as semantic features of sexism are concerned, the paper analyzes different sexist phenomenon in terms of semantic non-parallel of paired words and semantic collocation. Semantically, the terms and expressions related to male usually have neutral or appreciative implications while the female counterparts are depreciative, or even related to sex. With regard to sexism at the lexical level, it is concerned with analysis in word formation, generic masculine, sexually weighted words for women and word order. Sexism is also found in proverbs and idioms. Proverbs and idioms provide interesting glimpses to people's geography, history, culture, social views in an easily understandable way and truly reflect the inequality of men and women. Another asymmetry in the representation of male and female in English is reflected in the naming conventions and addressing practices. Women are named after their husband's family name after marriage. Men are addressed on the basis of their social status whereas women are addressed in light of their relationship with the men in their lives.Apart from the above analysis, the paper provides suggestions as to alternative non-sexist words and phrases. According to the above analysis, the author draws the conclusion that language, in essence, is a reflection of society. If social inequality remains, linguistic attempts to achieve real equality exclusively are empty talk, so getting rid of sexism in English lies in the social reform and the improvement of women's social status.