Language and Literature

2013

Language and Sexism

Rachelle Chew
Internal Assessment: Written TaskWord Count (excluding rationale): 863Rationale Word Count: 372

Canadian International School Singapore

Rachelle Chew Clementi St 14 Singapore 14th December 2011 Dear David Marsh,

Office of a David Marsh Guardian London Office England, The United Kingdom

Im currently studying the relationship between language and real world issues or rather the interactions between languages and todays society. By chance, I came across the article titled Sexist language: it's every man for him or herself that you published on the Guardian and I have some comments on the subject that can maybe be put forth in further discussion. From my knowledge, sexism today is much like racism. Even though it has improved significantly but it is still rampant in todays society and much subtly so. Day to day language is one of the ways in which sexism presents itself. Like you have mentioned, simple things such as why only women had different names based on their marital status and the fact the world man or men is used to generalize all of humankind, whether it be in jobs or novels. However I think sexism in language did not just stem from society alone but the fact of the matter is that in English, the word woman ceases to exist without the suffix of man. As such, women are seen dependent on men, as where men can exist on their own, women are of a much lower class and too weak to exist on their own and need the help of men. Ironically enough, sexism seems to be prevalent in where there is the presence of English. Other languages such as French, Korean and Chinese do not have the word woman depend on the word man. The words do not share a great correlation, but rather share the same characteristics. For example in French, man and woman are homme and femme respectively, sharing the mme suffix. Likewise in Korean (yeoja) and (namja) represents woman and man respectively, with the ja () suffix. Nam and yeo, the base of the word do not share any characteristics, represents their own gender and are able to exist as an independent word without co-depending on the other, putting both genders on an equal pedestal. As a result and based off my own experience sexism predominantly takes place in informal English. Demeaning words and derogatory phrases towards women often come up in songs, the Internet and daily conversation. I currently Korean and Chinese and I listen to their music a lot. Based on culture, Asian music should be more expressive of women being second-class or less important in relation to men, however this is not the fact. Rarely do you hear that men are being put on the higher pedestal or hear the use of demeaning gender specific name-calling. In pop songs, it is almost always the males yearning the love of another female, the females that cause the heartbreak. Even in rap and hip-hop songs, females are not secondary to men. Sure it talks about drugs, sex and money but it does not degrade women the way English music does. There isnt even a need for gender-neutral words such as

heesh because in the first place, the words were not gender specific, which created a sense of equality. In Korean, it was never policeman or police officer it has always been (gyeongchal). In Chinese as well, regardless if you were a man or a woman, if you were in the police force, you were always referred to as (jing cha). Consequently, because these languages have always been so gender neutral, sexism is less prevalent. Whereas in the case of English, sexism is so pervasive because the language is so gender specific to begin with. If gender-neutral names came into creation first in the English language, sexism would not be as widespread as it is now. As in your article, AA Milne said, if the English language was more organized, a lot of trouble and sex related offences would be minimized. To which I completely agree. Only now as you said, linguists and grammarians have been struggling to find, create and implement epicene words. Even the word human is not completely gender-neutral; it has the man suffix thereby meaning without man there is no human. To which I believe this is why when generalizing the worlds population or other people, the word men is used. It is simply because the English language is dominated by male specific words. Even epicene words such as nurse, need the male prefix as if the status and preeminence of men needed to be reaffirmed. Should there not be a male prefix, the occupation of nursing would be too weak and be embarrassing towards males as the occupation is female dominated, having the male prefix allows for males to reestablish their place in occupational environments and thus becoming an omnipotent looming presence in the English language, stimulating sexism. Fundamentally, English is a very male-based language. And without the introduction or creation of gender-neutral words together with the widespread use of it, sexism will always be present in the English language. It is in Englishs nature to have the males be of superiority over the females. I think if sexism in society needs to be solved, the language first has to change. When it changes, the non-sexist nature will needlessly translate over to the real world.

Rationale: Having already explored language and power, I wished to explore a different part of society. Being a female and seeing the importance of gender equality, I wished to discuss sexism in todays world and how it is expressed in language. Through my search of language and sexism, I found an article on BBC talking about sexist words in the English language and the obvious lack of gender-equal or neutral words. Grammarian David Marsh who examined different gender-specific words in relation to todays society and our everyday lives wrote this article. And so instead of writing a news article on the topic that is already being addressed, I decided to take the letter to the editor route, and write a response to the article. In my response I tried to investigate more and add more to the article on where sexism stems from in different languages. To compare English to other languages, Ive used the languages that I have already been exposed to, French,

Chinese and Korean. In the response I discussed the nature of the language in relation to gender. In retrospect I found out that only English had the word woman fully dependent on the word man. Without man, there is no woman, showing the superiority of the man and I gave evidence of this in my own personal context in addition to comparing the same words in three to four different languages. Language and sexism also relates to language and power as seeing that the more prominent a certain gender is in a language, the more likely that gender is also in power in the real world. Which in this case is true, as men tend to take on more authoritative positions over women. What I wished to avoid during this response was sounding like a feminist. I tried to avoid coming off as extremely female biased but instead tried to give an account of my findings into sexisms roots in language. As such, I didnt try to lift women up nor put men down but rather just contrast the different gender dynamics in different languages. The purpose of this was to reexamine the article, do further investigation and respond to the article hoping to create productive and positive discussion.