marriage, there is much linguistic evidence showing that weddings are more important to women than to men. Many proverbs reflect such feudal consciousness that girls are not important in a family. For example: “it is a sad house where the hen crows louder than the cock”, “Marry your son when you will, your daughter when you can”, “there are many good women, it is true but they are in their graves”. (庄和诚,2002) Such examples have revealed women are inferior and subordinate to them.
B. Sexism in English Expressions
English has gradually formed the tendency that the expressions referred to the male generalize the ones pointed to the two genders during its development. Although people do not mind to discriminate against women during their communications, the phenomena that people discriminate against women reflect the gender bias of society, and sometimes, women feel insult from other people. Moreover, some expressions structure that elaborate the meanings of discriminating against woman have emerged, and therefore people call English a ***ist language.
1. The Summary of Masculine Expressions on Two Genders
Masculine English expressions summarize two genders. People often meet such sentences during our study and daily life: “any patient is free to bring his complaint to me if he feels aggrieved”, “we hope the reader will use his own judgment”, “everyone should hand his homework tomorrow”. From the above examples, it is clear that the words “his” or “he “in the sentences refer to two genders, not the single gender, that is to say, “he” contains “she”, “his” contains “her”. Besides, to begin a letter, words referred to males contain two genders in salutations of a letter, people often use the words referred to man summarize man and woman when they do not know the receiver’s specific *** of the people, for example, in formal letters, people often use “Dear sir or Dear gentlemen”, but do not care for the receiver’s ***. The ***ism exists in every field, so people should pay much attention to the ***ist phenomenon in the language.
2. Sex Orders in Expressions and Words
Female words are behind male words, in some English expressions, when referring to men and women, the two genders are not equal, female words are behind male words, for instance: brother and sister, father and mother, boys and girls, husband and wife, man and woman. Those do not elaborate the ***ist meanings in form but with ***ism in sense. The jobs teacher, nurse, secretary, model, and etc, these neutral words are designated to female, but professor, lawyer, doctor, etc. are recognized as masculine words and designated to males. All these customaries are a social bias, just look at another example: “professional”, when a man is called a professional, he is thought to be a doctor or a lawyer, but when people hear a woman referred to as a professional, and they are likely to think of a prostitute. But it is not true today, because so many women have become doctors and lawyers that it is no longer incongruous to think of women in those professional roles. People should change their traditional conceptions that females are inferior to males.
3. The Changes of Female Words’ Meanings
During the development of English, many female words’ meanings have taken place during the
history. For example, “governor”, in old English, it referred to the person in charge of a particular unit, and now it keeps the same meaning. However, the relative word “governess” means another th
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