In 1789, after the French Revolution, a group of Parisian women poured into Versailles to demand legal human rights from the National Assembly, a feat that opened the curtain on women's struggle for equal rights. In the 1960s, a new fringe discipline was born in the United States, sociolinguistics, which studied language from a social perspective. In 1966, the United States established the "National Women's Organization", they demanded equality between men and women, including language equality, the Ministry of Labor changed the names of more than 3,000 occupations to gender-neutral words without gender distinction, and since then, the fight for gender equality in language has not stopped.
U.S. states have introduced new laws that aim to change gender discrimination in language
Berkeley has long been a bastion of liberal thought. This week, Berkeley passed a bill that would remove the word gender distinction and discrimination from the english language from the city's law books and laws: "Manhole" would be replaced by "maintenance hole"; "Sisters and brothers."
(Siblings)
It will be replaced by the neutral word "siblings"; third-person singular pronouns such as "he or she", even if they simply refer to a person, will be replaced by "they".
Lori DeRost, a member of the city council, said the city council unanimously passed the decision to convey a message that it would further achieve equal rights for men and women. Women and gender-neutral people are equally entitled to the same rights as men. "This bill will be applied to all walks of life in the city – traffic, health and safety regulations, garbage collection, environmental regulations and building permits.
Keith Johnson, chair of the linguistics department at the University of California, Berkeley, said that for years, the language of English has been freed from its own sexism. “Stewardess
(Flight Attendant)
It was no longer used and replaced with a neutral "flight attendant"
(Flight Attendants)
。 Waitress
（Waitresses）
and waiters
（waiters）
Now commonly referred to as "servers"—"-ess" belongs to the root of the word with female characters, for example, actress means actress. According to Keith Johnson, "The movement for gender equality continues to evolve with the times. The issue of gender discrimination in language cannot continue to be ignored. ”
In English, the vocabulary of man is very large, and most of them have positive meanings, such as "a man of iron"
(Iron Man)
There are fewer words that contain women and are mostly pejorative. With the development of the women's liberation movement and the continuous improvement of women's social status, women advocated for social change in the conventional view of women. These efforts are also infiltrating into the language step by step. More and more women are demanding the removal of strong gender tendencies from their language.
In recent years, some cities in the United States have passed laws that change language about sexism. Alaska's Fairbanks Polaris municipality unanimously passed a resolution in late February removing sexist terms from the city. In May, Philadelphia residents passed a measure with about two-thirds of the support that changed the city's charter, changing the previous usage of "councilmen" as "councilmen" to "council members." Last month, Mortenoma County, Oregon, passed a similar measure, replacing gender pronouns with "they."
What happens in California can always be extended to the whole united States. Whether it's banning smoking in restaurants, enacting strict exhaust emissions standards, or allowing you to turn right at a red light, these changes in California have led to changes across the country.
But are other U.S. cities ready to fundamentally change the gender discrimination problem in English? English, as well as French, Spanish, German, etc., do have some gender discrimination problems in grammar, but these bills have also been criticized a lot. Some grammarians refuse to use the word "they" to refer to a single person. Lawmakers at the University of California, Berkeley, said City Hall was on the verge of being overwhelmed by phone calls and emails. Critics say that using plural pronouns to refer to singulars can cause some confusion. One critic said, "This is a disruption to English grammar." For a language, it's a torture. ”
It is very normal to question and criticize the modification of deep-rooted idioms of language. However, Ms. Hahn, a female activist, believes that the decree still has great significance, for example, when a girl first sees the word "Chairman", she may feel that only men are competent for this job. Therefore, the decree of removing the genderization of language will help to change the situation of inequality between men and women.
Gender discrimination in the Chinese language
Language is a mirror of the real world. The phenomena of the real world, beauty and ugliness, are all in it. The philosophical attitudes of both the East and the West indicate the different evaluations and cultural identities of men and women: men represent the positive side, which is a symbol of domination and domination; while women represent the negative side, a symbol of subordination and dependence.
According to the Sapir-Wolfe hypothesis, language is not only a product of society, but can in turn influence the construction of the human mind and spirit. Language that reflects sexism, in some way, promotes the formation of psychosocial stereotypes, sustains a society that oppresses women and hinders the pace of gender equality.
The language hypothesis put forward by the American Sapir and his disciple Wolff held that all high-level thinking depended on language. Each language is defined by culture forms and categories according to which people interact not only, but also to analyze reality, to pay attention to or ignore certain relationships and phenomena, to sort out their reasoning and to construct their own consciousness. Each language artificially divides in different ways the awareness of the constant emergence and flow of existing things.
In addition to the gender discrimination problems in English, Chinese Chinese characters and French also have gender inequalities that have formed since ancient times.
In Chinese characters, "female" is written as hieroglyphs in ancient oracle bones. This hieroglyph resembles a person kneeling facing the left side with his hands crossed in front of his chest. From this word, we can analyze that women are originally set up as the embodiment of the image of caution and humility. In addition, Chinese is an isolated language, there is no other language in terms of sex and lattice changes, and the expression of its meaning mainly relies on the change and reorganization of the word order between Chinese characters.
Through the study of the ranking of Chinese vocabulary, it can be found that in almost all the words of male and female names, the male ranks first and the female ranks behind. For example: couples, brothers and sisters-in-law, parents, etc. According to the law of Chinese arrangement, the high value and important are often ranked first. It can be seen that the vocabulary of the female logo is arranged after the male, reflecting the historical situation in which men are higher than women, and reflecting the social prejudice of "men over women".
In French, a large number of nouns appear in pairs of masculines, and many feminine forms are based on masculines. For example: acteur →actrice
(Actor)
。 It is not difficult to see the status of women in traditional French culture. This method of lexical construction fully reflects the great prejudice and contempt for women in French society, indicating the subordinate attribute of women in status.
We see that with the progress of society, not only is English removing its own gender inequality, but some sexist words in the Chinese have also quietly changed, such as "nanny"
(Female)
Gradually classified as "domestic servant". This change reflects the gradual socialization of housework, dilutes the gender differences in the occupation, and blurs the original gender exclusivity of the occupation. For example, women engaged in the sex trade are rarely used in writing, such as "miss", and often replace it with "sex worker". Sociolinguistics will evolve as the women's movement progresses. In the process of social development for women's rights and interests, the gender inequality in the Chinese will gradually improve. However, only by taking the initiative can we better face up to the existence of this problem and thus improve the problem of gender discrimination in language.
Compilation and References:
BAI Ziming. Sexism in English and the Influence of the Feminist Movement on English[J].Journal of Sichuan University of Foreign Languages,1999(3).
ZHAO Ronghui. A Review of Language and Gender Studies[J] . Journal of Foreign Language Studies, 1999(3)(In Chinese)
Pan Fan, 2015, "The Phenomenon of Sexism in the Chinese Language", An Hui Literature (Second Half Of the Month), No. 1
TAO Zhiping. An Analysis of the Phenomenon of Sexism in English Language[J].Examination Weekly, 2011(24):107-108.
Author: Yan Xiaoxu
Editor: Yang Siqi
Proofreader: Xue Jingning