A Study On The Relationship Between "Tomboy" And "Sissy" And Social Gender Construction

The most obvious characteristics of modern language phenomena are the characteristicsof men and women in speech style. This is slowly changing. Women don’t follow the rule of“wifely submission and virtue” any more and they don’t need to be real ladies. Women’slanguage and acting is more masculine in political, military and business. Women becomemore masculine, which we call “tomboy”. Similarly, men whose language and acting withmore feminine traits, are called “sissy”. Here the author calls it “neutralization”,neutralization is a new phenomenon and people attach more importance to it.This article takes the results in research of theory of language and gender as thetheoretical basis. Through the perspective of social gender construction, and with the methodof critical discourse analysis (CDA), the author analyzes their language characteristics andbehaviors in one classic movie and some various images in modern society. One conclusionwhich we get is different social practices shape different gender identities, at the same time,they also construct gender language. Cameron’s gender construction also applies to Chinesenational conditions, the development of social economy and the changeable values are thevital factors when it comes to the reasons of the existence of “tomboys and sissies”.Meanwhile, because of Chinese reform and opening-up policy, western countries’ thinkingpatterns have had an unprecedented impact on the Chinese. Such as an increase inhomosexuals, transsexuals and among other gender identities. Those reasons have alsocaused an increase in tomboys and sissies.From the perspective of gender construction, CofP tries to explain the reasons ofdifferences of gender language; it is more comprehensive and objective than the traditionaldual theories. CofP does not keep a watchful eye on sex but gender, it thinks that the rootcause of gender formulation is because of people’s taking part in different socialactivities(such as male soccer, male army, male board of directors, female secretary, aerobicsand so on). They construct their genders in their own communities of practice, and theyshow up the corresponding behavioral characteristics, including language behavioral characteristics. Therefore, gender is not static; it is changing with the different socialactivities. It is a social category that constructed in the practice communities. That is, socialgender construction is dynamic.As educators, we should cultivate youngsters’ awareness to explicit gender differences,in eliminating gender stereotyping and in shaping the rational gender roles from the gendercognition and bisexual temperament.