语言中是否存在性别歧视——基于英汉语言文字构造的考察

Does Sexism Exist in Language:A Comparative Study of Sexism in English and Chinese Morphology

学界普遍认为,性别歧视是一种非常普遍的社会现象,也反映在语言文字中,而且还出现了性别歧视语言之类的概念。语言的性别歧视现象也受到女权运动者的全面挞伐。对英语构词中的性别标记特征与汉语造字结构中的性别形状与位置特点的分析,得出以下结论:英汉语言文字构造中无所谓性别歧视,所谓语言的性别歧视只是社会赋值的结果,因此不宜将性别歧视问题扩大化。

Sexism has been regarded as a wide-spread social phenomenon, not only found in various social activities but also in natural languages. And there even has appeared the term sexist language. The so-called sexist language has been fiercely attacked by feminists. This paper gives us a comparative study of sexism while inquiring into English and Chinese morphology with the so-called sex discrimination markers, and comes to the conclusion that sexism, contrary to what has been assumed, cannot be proved to exist in English and Chinese morphology. Sexism, if any, is a matter of social imposition, i.e. values assigned to the already existent expressions.