A Tentative Study Of Chinese Students’ Sensitiviy To Sexism In English

As society has paid more and more attention to women, there have emerged more and more studies of sexism. Scholars have conducted research of the forms of sexism in English, of the suggestions for reducing sexism in English, investigations into the detrimental impact of sexism over people’s psychology and the confronting strategies. However, the study of people’s sensitivity to sexism is scanty.The present study aims to investigate Chinese students’sensitivity to sexism by means of questionnaires comprising passages of explicit sexism and implicit sexism. There are92English majors from three universities participating in my research obtained through a stratified sampling. Results show that students in general have limited sensitivity to sexism in English but are relatively more sensitive to explicit sexism and less sensitive to implicit sexism, and they are not sensitive to the sexist assumptions and sexist presuppositions in these English passages. Gender is a distinctive factor in students’sensitivity to sexism in that females are more sensitive to sexism and the sexist assumptions and presuppositions, but males seem not to be sensitive to the sexist presuppositions at all. English level appears to be unrelated to students’ sensitivity to sexism in English but students of more advanced levels tend to have similarly stable sensitivity in terms of explicit sexism. In addition, the present study shows that specific social and cultural factors can also influence students’ sensitivity in that gender-related topics witnessing more discussions in contemporary society tend to trigger off stronger sensitivity from the students. In the meantime, certain reasons have been proposed to account for students’ different sensitivity to sexism in English.