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This thesis mainly has six parts. The first part is an introduction. The literature review is given in the second part, which intends to give more professional knowledge about sexism in English. An analysis about sexism in English from five aspects: vocabulary, grammar, semantics, appellation and proverb is given in the third part. The fourth part recounts some possible shaping factors of this cultural phenomenon. The fifth part is to provide two solutions to this social problem. We will give a conclusion of this thesis naturally in the last part.
2. Literature Review
Early works about sexism were mainly documents, which pointed out that sexual discrimination in the English language is inherent. In 1922, Otto Jespersen, used a whole chapter to detail the features of female language in his work Language------Its Nature, Development and Origin. It is the first widely influential study on sexism in the English language and has a vital influence on the linguistic field. The author compared the male language features with female language features, he believed that man dominate the world.
Dale Spender is another important person, who believes that with the feature of being man-made, language has a significant influence on women’s status. (Spender, 1980: 14)
Later in the early 60s of 20th century, a new cutting-edge subject named Sociolinguistics emerged. It makes the study on language become more profound than before, and many western universities began to run this course. In 1960s, the women’s Liberation Movement broke out, and it promoted the further research on sexist language. Famous linguistics in the 1970s, such as Lakoff, Trudgill and Henley, as well as Blinger in 1980s, made a huge process on the study of sexual discrimination in English. The subsequent researches are based on the results of the 80’s. However, they hold an objective attitude towards sexism.. They not only studied the sexual discrimination against females but also concerned the sexual discrimination against males.
Now, the research about sexist language has many subjects. It mainly has three groups: the first is sexual discrimination against different genders and its development tendency; the second is the study of difference between male language and female language; and the third is the study of the existing research results on sexist language.
In China, when the Culture Movement broke out, people began to know the sexism in Language. After many years, the study on sexism in language becomes more and more systematic.源.自|优尔,-论`文'网www.youerw.com
In the book Social and Psychological Linguistics, the authors point out that the study of sexism in language at home and abroad falls into three aspects: the first is the sexual discrimination of language against female and its innovation scheme; the second is the gender difference of language use, that is, the differences of language used by males and females; the third is the study of the factors that result in sexual discrimination and gender differences in language use (Wang Dechun, 2000: 224)
There are many other works about sexism in English published in China. They basically introduce and summarize the findings of the studies in western countries. Huang Chunying argues that language is related to our humanity. The views and values of our society can affect language (Huang Chunying, 2001: 87 ). Chen Lihong points out that “The application of sex syndrome in words has become an inevitable tendency in the development of society”. She studies sexism from the perspective of the English language and its non-sexist trend (Chen Lihong, 2003: 57). Yang Zhihui points out that sexist language exists widely in social communication, affects their thinking and takes deep root in people’s mind. He also studies sexism in language and causes of sexism(Yang Zhihu, 2005: 64). Jiang Yanling examines sexism in English from feminist perspective and takes the effect of Women’s Liberation Movement into consideration in order to study the evolution of sexism in English language(Jiang Yanling, 2014: 19).