sexism in language
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Transcript of sexism in language
University of Babylon
College of Education for Human Sciences
Department of English/ PhD Programme
The Prevalence of
Masculine Expressions in English
A term paper
Submitted in partial fulfillment for the requirements of a
PhD course in General Linguistics
by
Ahmed Sahib Jabir
Jan, 2013
1. Introduction
The generic use of masculine gender is a universal
phenomenon that can be traced back in many languages. Pauwels’
(1998) work proves that the linguistic sexism1 is an “international
phenomenon”. Despite the differences between languages, Pauwels
(ibid) presents a number of common elements in the linguistic
representation of women and men across several languages (see also
Newman et al. 2008):
a. the man is portrayed as the norm for all human beings;
b. the woman’s linguistic invisibility, or, when she is visible,
her asymmetry in comparison to man is evident; and
c. some terms denoting women depend on terms denoting
men2.
As for the English language, its history is stuffed full of
masculine terms used in reference not just to men, but to human
beings in general, or to persons of unspecified gender (Newman,
1996: 353).
Earp (2012) mentions some of these cases through the
examples mentioned below:
From the New Testament Jesus rebuked his tempter with:
(1) Man does not live on bread alone.
1 The term 'sexism' was invented in the 1960s to refer to discrimination within a social system on the basis of sexual membership: male and female. The relationship between these two categories is not an equal or egalitarian one but hierarchical, where the category 'male' is the norm and the category 'female' represents the 'other' and the 'abnormal', that is the 'marked version' (Wodak, 1997: 7).
2 Some examples are: prince/ princess; god/ goddess; author/ authoress; mayor/ mayoress; host/ hostess; steward/ stewardess; poet/ poetess; usher/ usherette; sailor/ sailorette…etc.
From Hamlet‘s existential musings we get:
(2) What a piece of work is a man!
The USA founding fathers held as self-evident that:
(3) All men are created equal.
And Neil Armstrong famously uttered his remark via live broadcast
from the moon:
(4) One small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.
The use of he in English to refer to a person of unknown gender
has been prescribed by usage manuals of traditional grammarians,
style books, and school textbooks from the early eighteenth century,
an early example of which is Anne Fisher's (1745) grammar book A
New Grammar. O’Connor and Kellerman (2009) cite the following
examples from Fisher's (1745) grammar:
(5) The customer brought his purchases to the cashier for
checkout.
(6) In a supermarket, anyone can buy anything he needs.
(7) When a customer argues, always agree with him.
This may also be compared to the usage of the word man to humans
in general as the examples (1-4) mentioned above
2. The use of pronouns
The idea that he, him and his should go both ways (with
masculine and feminine) caught on and was widely adopted.
Nonetheless, this generic masculine use is being eliminated, usually
by recasting the sentences with plural forms. Newman (1996: 367)
believes that in modern colloquial speech, sometimes they is used
even when the gender of the subject is obvious; they implies a generic
(or representative of type class) rather than individuated
interpretation.
Singular nouns (e.g. someone) are followed by plural pronouns
(they instead of he), so that the pronouns actually disagree in number
with their antecedents. This solecism, which feminist language
reformers have lately sought to legitimize, is common enough in
casual speech (Stek, 2005).
Opposing this view of legitimizing the use of they, Quirk and
Greenbaum (1974: § 7.30) state that he is to be used as an unmarked
form to refer to anybody or everybody, male or female since the use of
they in this context is “frowned upon in formal English” and that it
should only be used in informal situations.
A point is to be mentioned here that might be quite surprising.
The use of they as a generic pronoun is not recent as the above
discussion may falsely indicate: for centuries it was used by writers
as far back as Chaucer who used it for singular and plural, masculine
and feminine. Nobody seemed to mind that they, them and their were
officially plural so they should not be used with singular nouns
(O’Connor and Kellerman, 2009). As Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary
of English Usage (Web-source 2) explains, writers were comfortable
using they with an indefinite pronoun like everybody because it
suggested a sexless plural.
Paradoxically, if any single person is responsible for the
masculine generic usage of he, it is (as mentioned above) the female
grammarian, Anne Fisher, an eighteenth century British
schoolmistress and the first woman to write an English grammar
book. That book ran to more than thirty editions, making it one of the
most successful grammars of its time (O’Connor and Kellerman,
2009).
Feminists, however, are proponents of using gender-
inclusive language, such as humanity3, he or she, him or her instead of
mankind, he, and him respectively. Feminists are also proponents of
using non-sexist language, using Ms. to refer to both married and
unmarried women, for example, or the ironic use of the term
“herstory4” instead of “history”... and the like (Web-source 1).
Recently, nevertheless, the “struggle” of the feminist reform
movement is gaining “triumph” in various aspects of life and one of
the most important aspects is language. There is evidence for the
successful adoption of feminist linguistic alternatives to gender-
biased occupational nouns. It was shown that there is substantial
evidence, especially in English language communities of the adoption
and use of non-sexist occupational nouns, titles and terms (Pauwels,
2012).
Finally and as a personal remark, I dare say that The Feminist
Reform Movements5 has fully succeeded as far as language is
concerned not only to impose , as it were, non- sexist forms but we
can notice that a large number of books published during the last ten
years use the pronouns she, her, and herself generically! This is what I
3 Ironically, women cannot “get rid of man” since the suggested alternative to mankind is no more than humanity, a noun which is derived from human!
4 The term “herstory” is coined to replace “his” with “her”. Interestingly enough, it also denotes “her story” i. e. the story of women’s suffering from sexist language!
5 For information about these movements visit: http://www.writework.com/essay/feminist-reform-movements-19th-century-insert-more-transit
have personally observed when consulting references in my PhD
courses this year.
3. Terms of Address
In English, the term of address which is used to refer to a man is only
Mr. while for a woman it is either Mrs. or Miss. Flower (1991: 94)
states that these terms of address, which are used for women, declare
their marital status (married or single respectively) and,
consequently, announce their “sexual availability”. Moreover, it
signals the “fact” that they are “possessed” by men, a matter which
needs no argument since it is customary for a woman to take her
husband’s family name after marriage.
It is for these reasons that feminist movements strongly object6 the
use of these terms proposing instead the neutral term, Mis, to be used
to address any woman, whether married or not. This is in analogy
with the term Mr. which is used for any man, single or married (ibid).
4. Other Masculine Expressions
Masculinity does not show up only in pronouns. In many other
words, masculine forms are frequently employed. For instance, job
titles ending in man dating from a time when only males performed
the jobs described are still in use. Nowadays, however, men and
women are equally employed in different jobs so such titles need
modifications (Newman et al. 2008). Examples of such titles with the
suggested non-sexist counterparts are listed below:
Non-sexist form6 A point which I, as far as I could investigate, did not find mentioned in a reference is, I think, worth
stating: feminists’ strong objection to gender-biased language can be justified through Whorf-Sapir hypothesis. Women object these linguistic forms because they reflect how men look at them: they seem to think that men take them as “sexual objects”.
Masculine form
Businessman/ Businessmen Business person / Business people
Chairman Chairperson
Congressman Member of Congress
Fireman Fire fighter
Foreman Supervisor
Manmade Handmade
Policeman Police officer
Repairman Repairer
Salesman Sales agent or sales associate
Spokesman Spokesperson
Watchman Guard
Workmen Workers.
Pauwels (1998: 34) mentions that the stereotypical linguistic
representation of both sexes suggests that women are primarily
depicted as sexual creatures whereas men are portrayed as rational
beings. Moreover, “bad” features are attributed to females (e. g. He
cries like a girl!) while “good” features are ascribed to males (She
sounds like Mozart!). In recent years, nonetheless, such practice is
generally avoided7.
Some English words, especially the name of some professions,
are basically of common gender, namely, they can be applied to both
sexes. However, people habitually associate them only with male8. 7 When a search is made through the internet for sexist language, gender-biased language, and
similar terms, the results are surprising! Hundreds of websites, manuals, handbook…etc. are devoted to giving instructions how to avoid the traditional bias of language towards masculinity.
8 Consider this conversation between (A) and (B) who are both native speakers of English: (A) I want to see the doctor. (B) She will be here in a minute. (A) No, I said I want to see the DOCTOR!
Consequently, we have to add “woman” before those names if we
want to refer to female of those professions (Lei, 2006: 88). For
example:
Common gender Female
Doctor woman doctor
Professor woman professor
Engineer woman engineer
Lawyer lady lawyer
Reporter girl reporter
Cameron (1994:29), on the other hand, points out that it is not only
words that matter: more significant is that meaning (which she calls
the real problem) may not correlate with the linguistic form. She
believes that sexism in language exists below the surface, so that
superficial reforms (like proscribing some finite set of offensive
forms or making all texts formally gender neutral) are insufficient to
fight it. Many instances of sexism are manifested not in single words
or specific constructions but through an accumulation of discursive
or textual choice.
5. Conclusions
Clearly, A takes the word “doctor” to denote a male doctor only.
From the very brief account given above concerning the use of
gender in English, the following conclusions can be arrived at:
1. Gender bias towards masculine forms has been universal and
rigorous attempts are continually made to gain linguistic
equality at least.
2. Gender in English has passed through different stages of
modifications, adaptation, and change.
3. The pronoun systems in particular has gone through various
stages regarding the choice of the generic pronoun:
a) They was first used for the singular male and female
although it violated number agreement;
b) He and him were then used as a more formal option
adhering to the grammatically important point of
agreement despite their obvious bias to males.
c) The phrases he or she, him or her were used as a
compromise solution so that language users abide by
both gender and number agreements though they have
frequently been described as awkward.
d) Recently, however, it seems that she and her are regularly
used generically to satisfy the demands of the feminist
movement!
4. Previously, English manifested gender bias towards masculine
expressions (sexist language) but presently there are more
tendencies toward replacing masculine expressions by neutral
ones (non-sexist language).
References
Cameron, Deborah. 1994. “Problems of sexist and non-sexist language”. In Exploring Gender: Questions and Implications for English Language Education, Jane Sunderland (ed), 26–33. Hemel Hempstead:
Earp B. (2012) The extension of masculine generics. Journal for Communication and Culture, Vol. 2 Issue 1. Retrieved on 3rd, Dec. 2012 http://www.thepassivevoice.com/07/2012/the-extinction-of-masculine-generics/
Flower, R. (1991) Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology. London: Routledge.
Lei, X. (2006) “Sexism in language” Journal of Language and Linguistics. Vol. 5 No. 1. pp 87-94.
Newman M. (1996) "What can pronouns tell us? A case study of English epicenes pronouns", Studies in language 22:2, 353–389.
Newman, M., C. Groom, L. Handelman, and J. Pennebaker (2008) “Gender Differences in Language Use: An Analysis of 14,000 Text Samples” Discourse Processes, 45: PP211–236.
O'Conner P. and S. Kellerman (2009). "All-Purpose Pronoun". The New York Times Retrieved on 18th Dec. 2012 from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26FOB-onlanguage-t.html?_r=0
Pauwels, A. (1998) Women changing the Language. London: Longman,
---------------- (2012) Feminist Language Planning: Has it been worthwhile? Retrieved on 6th Dec. 2012 from http://www.linguistik-online.de/heft1_99/pauwels.htm
Quirk, R. and S. Greenbaum (1974) A University Grammar of English. London: Longman.
Stek J. (2005) Today’s New International Version. Retrieved on 22th Nov. 2012, from http://www.bible-researcher.com/tniv.html#nota3
Wodak, R. (1997) Gender and Discourse. London: SAGE publications
Web sources:
(1) www.en.wikipedia.org
(2) www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/book.pl?usage.htm#