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英汉语言性别歧视对比研究_李慧

分类号：单位代码：10427

密级：学号：2007010208

硕士学位论文

A Contrastive Study of Linguistic Sexism

in English and Chinese

英汉语言性别歧视对比研究

研究生姓名李慧导师姓名孙岩梅副教授

学科、专业外国语言学及应用语言学

申请学位级别硕士答辩时间 2010年5月

学位授予单位济南大学

学位授予单位代码10427

2010年5月30日

A Contrastive Study of Linguistic Sexism

in English and Chinese

Li Hui

Under the Supervision of

Prof. Sun Yanmei

A Thesis Submitted to the School of Foreign Languages

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of Master of Arts

University of Jinan

Jinan, Shandong, P. R. China

May 30, 2010

原创性声明

本人郑重声明：所呈交的学位论文，是本人在导师的指导下，独立进行研究所取得的成果。除文中已经注明引用的内容外，本论文不包含任何其他个人或集体已经发表或撰写过的科研成果。对本文的研究作出重要贡献的个人和集体，均已在文中以明确方式标明。本人完全意识到本声明的法律责任由本人承担。

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Contents

Abstract in English (i)

Abstract in Chinese (iii)

List of Tables (v)

Chapter 1 Introduction (1)

Chapter 2 Literature Review (5)

Chapter 3 Theoretical Framework and Theories Concerned (9)

3.1 Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (9)

3.2 Feminists’ Theories (10)

3.3 Semantic Componential Analysis (11)

3.4 Prototype Theory (11)

Chapter 4 Contrastive Analyses of Linguistic Sexism in English and Chinese (15)

4.1 Representations of Linguistic Sexism in English (15)

4.1.1 Lexical Level (15)

4.1.1.1 Suffixes (15)

4.1.1.2 Compounds (16)

4.1.2 Syntactic Level (17)

4.1.2.1 Word Order (17)

4.1.2.2 Generic Masculine Terms (17)

4.1.3 Semantic Level (19)

4.1.3.1 Semantic Components (19)

4.1.3.2 Connotative Meanings (20)

4.1.3.3 Semantic Collocation (21)

4.1.3.4 Semantic Changes (22)

4.1.4 Discourse Level (24)

4.1.4.1 Formal Discourse (24)

4.1.4.2 Less Formal Discourse (27)

4.1.4.3 Informal Discourse (29)

4.2 Representations of Linguistic Sexism in Chinese (32)

4.2.1 Lexical Level (33)

4.2.1.1 Characters (33)

4.2.1.2 Compounds (35)

4.2.2 Syntactic Level (35)

4.2.2.1 Word Order (35)

4.2.2.2 Generic Masculine Terms (36)

4.2.3 Semantic Level (36)

4.2.3.1 Connotative Meanings (36)

4.2.3.2 Semantic Changes (37)

4.2.4 Discourse Level (37)

4.2.4.1 Formal Discourse (37)

4.2.4.2 Less Formal Discourse (41)

4.2.4.3 Informal Discourse (44)

4.3 Similarities and Differences of the Representations in English and Chinese (47)

4.3.1 Similarities (47)

4.3.1.1 Sexually Stigmatized V ocabulary for Women (47)

4.3.1.2 Marked Feminine Professional Terms (48)

4.3.1.3 Male-female Word Order (48)

4.3.1.4 Semantic Derogation of Women (48)

4.3.1.5 Loss of Women’s Surnames (49)

4.3.1.6 Submissive Female in Public Media (49)

4.3.2 Differences (49)

4.3.2.1 English Suffixes vs. Chinese Characters (49)

4.3.2.2 Non-corresponding Items Between English and Chinese (50)

4.4 Causes of Linguistic Sexism in English and Chinese (50)

4.4.1 Cultural Background (51)

4.4.1.1 Man-dominated Ideology and Religion (51)

4.4.1.2 Demonized Images of Women (53)

4.4.2 Social Division of Labor (54)

4.4.3 Psychological Localization (55)

Chapter 5 Development of Linguistic Sexism in English and Chinese (57)

5.1 Ameliorations of Linguistic Sexism in the Past (57)

5.1.1 Dictionaries (57)

5.1.2 Magazines (59)

5.1.3 Daily-using Language (60)

5.2 Forecast of Linguistic Sexism in English and Chinese (61)

Chapter 6 Conclusion (63)

Bibliography (65)

Acknowledgments (71)

Publications (73)

Abstract

Sexism is a universal phenomenon in society, which exists in different regimes and countries in varying degrees. As a pervasive phenomenon in society, it is reflected in the mirror of language, which is referred to as linguistic sexism. Although it represents as a linguistic phenomenon, it is actually caused by many kinds of ideological dross and outmoded conventions and customs settled in the culture for a long time, which reflects the discrimination against women in the society. In a broad sense, linguistic sexism refers to gender discrimination against both men and women. This thesis only probes into the study of linguistic sexism against women. This phenomenon, which can be found in both English and Chinese, refers to the expressive ways in language that unnecessarily differentiate between women and men or exclude, trivialize, or diminish women.

According to the views of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, language is not only the product of society, but also affects people’s thoughts and spirit constructions in reverse. People’s observations, perceptions and explanations of the world are inevitably influenced by language.Before the middle of the 20th century, people’s awareness of linguistic sexism remained perceptual and vague. In the west, the feminist movement in 1960s deepened people’s cognition of gender difference in language and inspired them to study on linguistic sexism. At the beginning, studies of the differences mainly concentrated on words and phonemes used by males and females, later expanded to grammatical elements. In China, linguists did not begin to the study on linguistic sexism until 1980s. Studies in China are based on and originated from the study of asymmetry in language, which occupied a great proportion. Most of the studies start from the expressive ways of language, and indicate that words, phrases and expressions used by males are the principals and those used by females are the adjunctive variables.

Globally speaking, studies in the relationship between language and gender entered into a systematical period and the research on linguistic sexism has progressed a lot. With the penetration of the research, people have realized the importance of eliminating linguistic sexism. Modern sociolinguists believe that linguistic sexism is a complicated

social phenomenon, and it is also about language performance and in different discourse.

The thesis adopts Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and feminists’ theories as its theoretical framework and analyses the representations of linguistic sexism in English and Chinese respectively at the following linguistic levels: lexical level, syntactic level, semantic level and discourse level. Linguists mostly studied it at one level unilaterally; however, it is an extensive linguistic phenomenon, which is also concerned with language performance under different discourse. The thesis expands the research range to discourse level, puts the discourse into three kinds: formal discourse, less formal discourse, and informal discourse according to the degrees of formality, and presents the phenomenon of linguistic sexism under each discourse. Whereafter, the thesis conducts a systematic comparison of the representations of linguistic sexism in English and Chinese. Due to the language universality, there exist some similarities in their representations. Meanwhile, they belong to different classifications and language families and each of them has its own diversity. With the help of Prototype Theory, this thesis aims at explaining the causes of linguistic sexism from the aspects of cultural background, social division of labor and psychological localization. Finally, the thesis analyses the developing characteristics and forecasts the developing trends of linguistic sexism in English and Chinese, evidenced by their traces of development under the three kind of discourse, with one representative for each discourse: dictionaries for the formal discourse, magazines for the less formal discourse, and daily-using language for the informal discourse.

The changing process of language is quite slow, which cannot be finished in one day or one night. As long as people have a full awareness of the representations of linguistic sexism, change the social ideology, and avoid using every word, phrase and expression that has formed the sexist usage of language, language can be purified and the harmony of language and society can be achieved.

Key words: linguistic sexism; English; Chinese

摘要

性别歧视是普遍存在的一种社会现象，在不同的社会制度和国家中都不同程度地存在着。而这一社会现象也通过语言这面镜子折射出来，形成了语言性别歧视性。虽然表现为一种语言现象，它实际上是诸种思想糟粕与陈规陋习在文化中长期积淀的结果，折射出社会对女性的种种歧视。狭义的性别歧视指对女性的歧视，广义的则包含对男性的歧视。本文仅对狭义的语言性别歧视现象展开研究。这种现象在英语和汉语中都颇为常见，是指不必要地区别女性和男性或排除、轻视、贬低女性的语言表达方式。

按照Sapir-Whorf 假说的观点，语言不仅仅是社会的产物，它还能反过来影响人们的思维与精神构建。人们对周围世界的观察、认识和解释，必然受到语言的影响。在二十世纪五十年代之前，人们还没有过多的认识和接触语言性别歧视。在西方国家，语言学家对语言性别差异的认识起源于上世纪六十年代的女权主义运动。但初期的研究主要集中在男女两性所用词和音位的考察上，后来延伸到语法特征。我国的学者八十年代之后才逐步接触和研究汉语中的性别歧视。国内研究的开端和基础体现在语言的不对称现象上，在整个研究中占有很大的比例。这些研究从性别歧视的语言表现形式入手，指出男性用语是主体，而女性用语则是附属的变体。在全世界范围看来，专家学者自七十年代之后开始系统地研究语言与性别关系，并且在语言性别歧视方面也获得了巨大的进步。在现代社会语言学家看来，语言性别歧视是一个极为复杂的社会现象，更牵扯到语言运用的问题，受到不同条件下语境的制约。

本文以Sapir-Whorf 假说和女性主义理论为理论框架，从词汇层、句法层、语义层、语篇层等各语言学层面深入分析性别歧视现象在英语和汉语中的体现。以前的语言学家多倾向于片面、孤立地研究其在语言某一层面的体现，但性别歧视是一个极为广泛的语言现象，同时也充分地体现在语言的运用中，存在于不同的语篇中。本文探索的角度扩展至语篇范畴，按照正式程度把语篇划分为正式，次正式，非正式三种，再分别对每种语篇下的语言性别歧视进行分析。由于语言具有普遍性，性别歧视现象在两种语言中的体现有一些相似之处；但是，英语和汉语属于不同类型又分属不同语族，因此两者的差异又造成了性别歧视体现的不同。本文在分析两者异同之后，又结合原型理论，从文化背景、社会分工及心理定位等方面阐释英汉语言性别歧视的成因。

iii

最后，本文以三种语篇中具有代表性的字典、杂志、日常用语中性别歧视现象发展的历时研究为依据，分析其在英汉语言中的发展特征，并预测英汉语言中的性别歧视发展趋势。

语言的变化是一个缓慢的过程，并不是一朝一夕就能够完成的。人们只有深刻地认识性别歧视在语言中的具体体现，主动改变社会意识形态，从根源上避免使用每个构成性别歧视的字、词、句，净化语言表达方式，才能最终达到促进语言和谐和社会和谐的目的。

关键词：语言性别歧视；英语；汉语

List of Tables

Table 1 Common sex prototypes---------------------------------------------------------------13 Table 2 Suffixes for marked feminine nouns-------------------------------------------------16 Table 3 Seven categories of the characters with radical “女”------------------------------34 Table 4 A Students’ name list with “*” to mark the female--------------------------------41

Chapter 1 Introduction

Language is used to understand and describe the world. It is the vehicle, through which human beings express their ideas, thoughts and attitudes, and through which people communicate with each other. Most human knowledge and culture that we take it for granted are learned and transmitted through language from one generation to another. While children learn their native language, they also learn their native customs, habits and behavioral patterns. It is just like a mirror, loyally reflecting not only a nation’s history and culture, but also its beliefs and biases. All the phenomena in the society can be reflected in language. Human society in general is male dominant, and the persuasive ideology sees males to be superior to females. Men and women are biologically different, and the difference in gender determines their social roles. Man’s dominant, superior social status and woman’s subordinate, inferior social status have influenced the development of language and are revealed in language.

Sexism is “a system of beliefs and practices which affirm the control of men over women, which manifested in all forms of behavior and in all human institutions” (Lakoff, 1975). Sexism is any discrimination against women or men because of their sex, and made on irrelevant grounds. In addition, we can find some definitions of sexism in the dictionaries. According to New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998), sexism refers to “prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, especially against women, on the basis of sex”. In Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (1983), sexism means: 1) prejudice or discrimination based on sex; especially, discrimination against women; 2) behavior, conditions, or attitudes that foster prototypes of social roles based on sex. These definitions show that the female is largely the sex that suffers sexism in the society.

As a pervasive phenomenon in society, it is reflected and perpetuated in language about the devalued groups. Pauwels (1998) remarks that the phenomenon—the portrayal of men as the norm and women as the appendage or as the exception in language—is often referred to as linguistic sexism or androcentrism.

Linguistic sexism refers to kinds of prejudices or attitudes of one sex toward another

sex in linguistic area and the ways in which devalues members of one sex, almost invariably women. It implies the language that favors one sex over another, that belittle one sex, that makes one sex invisible and that masks sexual discrimination (Yang Yonglin, 2004).

Miller and Swift (1977) in their essay offer several examples of sexism in language and the ways in which the English language reflects a sexist culture. According to them, sexist language is any language that expresses stereotyped attitudes and expectations or that assumes the inherent superiority of one sex over the other. In this sense, both English and Chinese are sexist languages. However, there is still argument on whether English and Chinese is sexist or not, the traces of linguistic sexism can be definitely found in both of them.

In English, a person of unknown sex is referred to as “he” or “him” rather than “she” or “her”. A person who holds a meeting is the “chairman”, even if she is a woman. The human being can be referred to as “man” rather than “woman”. Masculine words always occur first when listed with feminine words, e.g., “father and mother”. Masculine words more often bear positive connotations, conveying power, prestige and leadership. In contrast, feminine words more often connote negative notions of weakness, inferiority and immaturity. Such cases can also be found in Chinese. In the federal society, women were often looked down upon and their wills and ideas could be hardly received with any respect. The old sayings, such as “唯女子与小人难养也”, “女子无才便是德”, “妇人之见”, all reflect the traditional ideology that women are inferior to men. The prejudice and discrimination against women can still be found in modern Chinese. “好男不跟女斗” implies that women are inferior to men. “嫁出去的闺女, 泼出去的水” suggests that women are useless. “红颜祸水” shows that women are often regarded as the sources of disasters. Besides, the placing of women in second rank in conjoined phrases can be found everywhere in Chinese, such as “男婚女嫁”, “夫唱妇随”, “夫贵妻荣”, “男才女貌”.

Language itself is not sexist, but the society is. Language reflects social reality in which sex inequality exists at a certain degree. People transfer the social sexism to language, and at the same time, linguistic sexism may reinforce the biased views. This thesis only probes into the study of linguistic sexism against women.

The thesis is composed of seven chapters. Chapter One is a brief introduction of the whole thesis. Chapter Two reviews the previous researches and significant works on linguistic sexism. Chapter Three elaborates some relevant terms, concepts and theories, which functions as the theoretical preliminaries of the thesis. Chapter Four analyses the manifestations of linguistic sexism in English and Chinese in a systematic way, makes a comparison between the similarities and differences of its representations in the two languages, including a large number of concrete and illustrative examples, and explores the causes of linguistic sexism from cultural, social and psychological perspectives. Chapter Five describes the ameliorations of English and Chinese in the past few decades and generally forecasts the trends of linguistic sexism in English and Chinese. Chapter Six draws a brief conclusion of the thesis.

Chapter 2 Literature Review

In western countries, the study on language and gender has become a popular topic for long within sociolinguistic area. Gender difference in language exists because most societies differentiate between men and women in various marked ways.

At the beginning, observations of the differences are involved in words and phonemes, and later expand to grammatical features. Bloomfield (1933), in his Language, enumerate the different words used by men and women of Yana Indians in the north of California in America, e.g., “’anua” (means fire) for men and “’auh” for women, “bana” (means deer) for men and “ba‘” for women. Trudgill (1983a) finds that in Darkhat, a Mongolic dialect, the two back rounded vowels [u] and [o] used by men equal the two central vowels [tt] and [?] used by women, and two central vowels [u] and [o] equal front vowels [y] and [ф]. He also finds the differences between masculine and feminine morphology in many other languages. For example, in English, female nouns can be formed through morphological changes (inflections or derivations) based on male nouns and they are asymmetrical.

This morphological asymmetry often makes women invisible, treats them as secondary or has a trivializing effect on the linguistic portrayal of women. The view that women’s status is not only dependent on that of men but also secondary to it is linked to the derivative nature of many female nouns from male ones. It is the study of asymmetry between male and female that found the base of linguistic sexism.

However, people did not actually show concern for linguistic sexism until the end of the 1960s. With more and more women getting involved in the feminist movement, the gender differences in language including linguistic sexism have begun to be questioned and challenged. Then various researches have been conducted, and feminist theories have been formulated. Lakoff is the most influential one, who has had direct impact on the systematic study of linguistic sexism. She gives linguistically specific accounts, which change the study into a reexamination of the differences of language between men and women. Lakoff points out in her book: “We will find, I think, that women experience linguistic discrimination in two ways: in the way they are taught to use language and in the

general way language use treats them” (1975). The influence of Lakoff’s book can never be ignored because it has evoked many linguists’ interest in the study on language and gender.

Lakoff (1975) have said, “Women’s liberation movement pushes the research into prominence, and creates atmosphere for its acceptance and legitimization”. Many linguists have pointed out that English assumes certain sex prototypes for men and women, and it puts women in a lower social position. Early works on linguistic sexism dealt with the means through which linguistic sexism exists, e.g., Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (1929). After them, Lakoff’s Language and Women’s Place (1973), Throne, Kramarae and Henley’s Language, Gender and Society (1983) and Bolinger’s two books Aspects of Language (1968), and Language: the Loaded Weapon (1980).

After 1980s, many linguists begun to explore the research on gender difference in language and to show a considerable amount of concern for linguistic sexism. In this period, the research of gender differences in language can be considered as systematic. Most of the studies concentrate on the following aspects of language: 1) The use of masculine pronoun and noun as generic terms (Mackay and Fulkerson, 1979; Mackay, 1980; Johnson & Mainhof, 1997); 2) Women’s invisibility (Schulz, 1975; Stanley, 1977); 3) The habitual listing of the masculine first (Cameron, 1985; Coates, 1993); 4) Semantic derogation of women (Lakoff, 1973; Schulz, 1975; Pauwels, 1998); 5) Addressing title “Mrs.” (Lakoff, 1973; Penelope, 1990; McConnell, 1996; Pauwels, 1998).

With their efforts, more and more linguists have begun to be involved in the study of linguistic sexism and it has become an independent research issue in the area of sociolinguistics. However, most of the linguists unilaterally study the manifestations of the phenomenon at any one linguistic level, and their works are scattered and not systematic.

Since early twentieth century, many linguists and feminists adopt the methods of contrastive linguistics to analyse linguistic sexism, for example, in Chambers’(1990) work on linguistic sexism in German and English. Researchers working on the semantic derogation of female terms often employ methods found in historical linguistics to trace the changes in meaning. Furthermore, contributions to this topic have expanded from linguistics and sociology to other fields such as philosophy, anthropology, psychology and

theology.

In China, the research of language and gender is limited in data and carried out slowly. People did not have any idea about linguistic sexism until the New Culture Movement in 1914. The Chinese character “她” (she) was then invented to give woman an independent identity in language (Xiong Wenhua, 1997). Nevertheless, until the last decades, more and more linguists began to pay attention to the research on linguistic sexism. Shi Yuhui (1984) is one of the trailblazers in the study of language and gender in Chinese. He gives a comprehensive analysis of the various forms of gender differences in Chinese in his book, A Sociolinguistic Study of Gender Differences in the Chinese Language. Moreover, he introduces nine dimensions of language and nonverbal communication, as follows: 1) the logographic writing system of Chinese; 2) lexical structures; 3) convention of naming; 4) deprecating terms for women in proverbs and classics; 5) word choice; 6) syntactic structure and language style; 7) phonology; 8) conversational topics and patterns; 9) nonverbal behavior. He almost finds the clues of gender differences in every dimension.

In the first three dimensions, he describes the reflections about sexes in Chinese, and in the rest dimensions, he discusses the different ways in which men and women use language, both verbal and nonverbal. During this process, he also finds what have been found earlier in many Indo-European languages—the linguistic sexism. He points out that the logographic writing system, the unique feature of Chinese, is a significant part of linguistic encoding of sexist bias in the Chinese language. At the end of the article, Shi concludes that linguistic sexism in Chinese ties closely with the patriarchal bias in the Chinese culture, and it will continue to exist until women gain an equal footing with men in the society.

Although not sufficiently prepared in theory, the early works made a valuable attempt to open up a promising field in the study of language and gender. Then the following linguists achieved more. The famous linguist Zhu Wanjin (1992) in her book Sociolinguistics: An Introduction introduces the researches in western countries on language and gender, in which linguistic sexism occupies an independent chapter. What is worth mentioning is that she systematically describes Mackay and Fulkson’s three experiments in 1978, 1980 and 1983, which demonstrate the usage of generic “he”.

Following her book, many studies concerning linguistic sexism have been published in China. Most of those studies are introductory and try to summarize the findings of English-speaking countries.

Farris(1988) adopts Chinese as research sources and does more researches in Taiwan. She tries to find that how the meanings of gender are linguistically encoded in Chinese, and how these meanings are learned as part of the sex role in the socialization process. Sun Rujian (1995), Wang Dechun (1997) and Yang Yonglin (2004) approach the topic from sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic perspectives. They explore linguistic sexism in Chinese characters and vocabulary and briefly explain the causes of the occurrence of linguistic sexism. Chang Jingyu (1995) and Yang Defeng(1999) analyse it on the level of lexicology. Besides, Geng Dianlei (1999) and Pan Jian (2001) have conducted comparative studies of linguistic sexism between Chinese and English at several linguistic levels. However, such studies are still rare and not comprehensive, among which a few are involved in the study of its practical use under different discourse.

In view of what is mentioned above, this thesis adopts theories from linguistics, feminism and psychology, aims to make a contrastive study of the representations of linguistic sexism in English and Chinese from a comprehensive perspective, and attempts to help people to develop awareness of linguistic sexism in different cultures.

Chapter 3 Theoretical Framework and Theories Concerned

This chapter elucidates the theoretical framework of the thesis and elaborates some major theories concerned in it. The thesis is based on the views of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and some principal feminists’ theories, and it represents the linguistic sexism with the help of Semantic Componential Analysis and uses the theory of prototype to reveal the causes of linguistic sexism. This chapter focuses on elaborating the four theories.

3.1 Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, named after the American linguist Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf (1956). What this hypothesis suggests is like this: our language helps mould our way of thinking and, consequently, different languages may probably express our unique ways to understand the world. Following this argument, two important points could be captured in this theory.

On one hand, language may determine our thinking patterns; on the other hand, similarity between languages is relative, the greater their structural differentiation is, the more diverse their conceptualization of the world will be. For this reason, this hypothesis has alternatively been referred to as linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity.

One thing we would like to point out here is that nowadays few people would possibly tend to accept the original form of this theory completely. Consequently, two versions of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis have been developed, a strong version and a weak version. The strong version of the theory refers to the claim the original hypothesis suggests, emphasizing the decisive role of language role as the shaper of our thinking patterns. The weak version of this hypothesis, however, is a modified type of its original theory, suggesting that there is a correlation between language, culture, and thought, but the cross-cultural differences thus produced in our ways of thinking are relative, rather than categorical.

More importantly, it is argued that the gender differences in language are brought about by nothing less than women’s place in society. The underlying point of this argument for reducing and eliminating linguistic sexism is rather meaningful. On one hand, we need