浅析英语中的性别歧视现象,标签：英语论文范文,毕业论文范文,http://www.dxs56.com
　　
　　(3) Social factor (Labor division)Feminists all claim that we live in a patriarchal society: asociety of men, ruled by men and for men. Patriarchy depictsmen as the perfect norm against which women are measured andfound lacking.
　　
　　Both the Western and Eastern societies use sex, to one degreeor another, in allocating tasks, activities, rights, andresponsibilities. As for the job done by men and women, thereis a long-stereotyped notion of what they can do. In history,there has been a division of labor--a division in whichwomen’s place was restrained at home for housework andchild-care while men worked outside being the breadwinner. Atlast, men had dominance over women, and women had to bedependent on men. This was the turning point for women. Fromthen on, in paternal society, slavery society and capitalistsociety, women had been on the bottom of society. In long andendless course of history, sexism against women has beenaccumulated. It is due to different labor division that leadsto different social status. This has been clear in ancient andmodern society. Later, in addition to domestic work, womenbegan to enter the paid work place. However, even though halfof women are employed outside the home, the belief persiststhat woman is mainly, and primarily, in the roles of wife andmother. www.dxs56.com
　　
　　Due to women's relative physical weakness and lowereducational background, they do primarily the low-status,low-paying jobs. Although men also have family roles, they aredefined primarily by their economic or occupational position.
　　
　　Thus the sexism in the society has been in existence, theembodiment of which is necessarily the sexism of language.
　　
　　(4) Psychological factorBecause of the social and cultural factors, women are alwaysconsidered to be the weak. People treat women as inferior tomen. They educate men to be manly, decisive, and brave whilewomen are required to be polite, conservative, obedient, andgentle. Because women are in subordinate status in thesociety, they have to constrain their emotion and give uptheir own need to meet the satisfaction of men. As timepasses, when speaking women pay more attention to the eleganceand standard of language than men. They use more pleasant andpolite words in the hope that they can receive other’sapproval. And they are taught to speak softly, to avoidcontradicting others, to be obedient in communication, and tobe aware of giving cues of strong confidence. They mouldthemselves to be inferior in their potential subconsciousness.[3] Therefore, women try their best tostrengthen their social status through their speech than mendo. The lower women’s position is, the more polite they are inthe face of others. And the standard language they use canshow their submission and politeness. This also suggests thatwomen are in a lower position in the society.
　　
　　3. Phenomena of sexism in the English language3.1 The generic masculineSexism in language in general comes in three major forms:
　　
　　language ignores women; it defines women as less significantthan men; and it completely opposes women. They can be locatedin the generic masculine terms. www.dxs56.com
　　
　　3.1.1 Generic pronounsGeneric pronouns are pronouns that are said to refer, withequal likelihood, to women and men. But the English languageignores women by allowing masculine terms to be usedspecifically to refer to males and commonly to refer to humanbeings in general. The generic pronoun “he” is perhaps themost well known example of the gender-specific of sexistlanguage, and is frequently referred to be “he/man” language.
　　
　　The most significant manifestation of the sexism is in the useof generic masculine pronouns “he” and its variants “his”,“him” and “himself” in such sentences as:
　　
　　(1) He who laughs last laughs best.
　　
　　(2) Everyone must do his homework well.
　　
　　(3) If anyone calls, tell him I will be back later.
　　
　　(4) Everyone should learn to solve problems himself.
　　
　　In the above examples, “he”, “his”, “him” and “himself” areused not sex-specifically, but generically, that is, althoughthe pronouns refer grammatically to the single male citizen,they should be taken to refer to both male and female citizensin general. On the formal occasions, ‘he’, ‘him’ or ‘his’ canbe used to refer to such indefinite pronouns as each,everyone, everybody, no one, someone, anyone and so on. While‘she’, ‘her’, ‘herself’ don’t have such usages.
　　
　　3.1.2 Generic nounsAnother well-known example of generic masculine terms is“man”. The definitions of “man” in Oxford Advanced Learner’sEnglish-Chinese Dictionary (Extended fourth edition) are asfollows: ① adult male human being; ② human being of eithersex; person ③ [sing](without the or a) the human race;mankind. There are some examples taken from the dictionary. ①All men must die. ②Growing old is something a man has toaccept. ③Man is mortal. [4] From these definitions andexamples, it is easy to see that “man”, and “men” can be usedgenerically to refer to both male and female. But ‘woman’ and‘women’ cannot be employed in reference to men. www.dxs56.com

上一页  [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]  下一页