Manifestations of sexism in English(英语论文).docVIP

Manifestations of sexism in English Morphology: Jesperson , the Denmark linguists, pointed out :“ English is the most masculine language in all the language he was familiar with ”in his book Language and Structure published in 1923. Suffix: In English the words that are used by men are usually unmarked while women are marked. These two words “unmarked” and “marked” were discussed by the renowned linguist Greenberg in the 1930s which discloses deeply the phenomenon of sexism in English languages . The suffixes are well known to people are: 1)-ess: actor and actress ,host and hostess, prince and princess, heir and heiress 2)-ette: farmer and farmerette, sailor and sailorette, major and majorette 3)-enne: comedian and comedienne, tragedian and tragedienne, equestrian and equestrienne 4)-trix: administrator and administratrix, aviator and aviatrix 5)other suffixs: fiance and fiancée ,hero and heroine This kind of word –formation is somehow considered that women are deprived for men. However, there are also exceptions .Under certain circumstances ,the phenomenon of “unmarked” and “marked” will be reversed ,For example, the use of “bride” and “bridegroom”. When women get married ,they will be called “bride”. And another pair is “widow” and “widower”. When women’s husbands died ,they will be called “widower” while men may remarry with someone else after their wives passed away. So in any of these cases reflects the sexual discrimination to women. Compounds: Take the word “kingdom” as example, and it refers to “a country governed by a king or a queen ”, and even the queen is in power ,there is no such word “queendom” existing. And looking at this instance “sports man ship” which means “behavior that is fair, honest and polite in a game or sports competition taken part by men or women”, however, there is no “sports women ship” ,even though there may be numbers of women in the game. What’s more, “man” can be regarded as “human beings” while “woman” has no such par