The regular occurrence of marked terms for female roles is a second example where the English language may be seen as degrading to women. Illustrations of this include ‘actress’ for females, where a suffix has been added onto the end of the unmarked male term ‘actor’, and ‘princess’ which derived from the unmarked male term ‘prince’. Many critics of the English language believe the usage of lexis in this way is sexist and demeaning for females, as it suggests male roles are more significant because the standard unmarked terminology is used to refer to them. Even the word ‘female’ is a marked term derived from ‘male’, and ‘women’ is derived form ‘men’. This repetitive format stems from the fact England has always been a patriarchal society, where female liberation is a relatively new idea, and as a result the English language still strengthens and perpetuates sexist attitudes. However, it is possible to argue that this is gradually changing, and the language is becoming less discriminate, because many marked terms such as ‘authoress’ are dying out; this is a sign of changing attitudes in society.
Another illustration of how the English language devalues women more than it does men is that there is a vast amount of insulting lexical usages for females, often with no equivalents for males, and usually with increased negative connotations compared to the insults aimed at males. For example, there are innumerable sexual insults such as ‘whore’, ‘slag’ and ‘slut’ that portray the view that women are sex objects. Lexis that denotes a man’s sexual lifestyle are incontestably more positive in general, for example ‘stud’, ‘player’ and ‘Casanova’. The idea that women are less significant than men is conveyed in the large variety of insults directed at women that compare them to animals: ‘cow’, ‘dog’, and ‘bitch’ are merely a few examples. The English language still seems to testify to archaic opinions of women when they were viewed as ‘belonging’ to men.
Patronising terms, including ‘darling’, ‘babe’ and ‘sweetheart’ are generally more widespread for describing women rather than men, and the English language is sometimes criticised for this fact. However, others may argue that these terms can be applied to both genders, and semantically suggest sentiments of endearment rather than patronisation.
In everyday speech, most people subconsciously follow the grammatical order of precedence concerning the placement of male words first in a phrase; the connotation is that men are of a superior status. For example, we generally say ‘he or she’, ‘male and female’, ‘his and hers’, and ‘sir or madam’. This unobtrusive feature of the English language helps to keep sexist phraseology alive in society today.
The female inanimate is also relevant to the argument for the English language being devaluing for women, because female pronouns such as ‘she’ and ‘her’ are used to refer to inanimate objects like ships and cars. This can imply male ownership, and therefore may suggest that women are of no more value than simple inanimate items. On the other hand, the male role in society is implicated to be even more superior considering ‘man’ is often used generically to refer to the whole human race, with the term ‘mankind’. ‘He’ is also a generic term that can be used to refer to individuals of either gender. This imbalanced feature of the English language seems to be derogatory towards females and complimentary to males. Combined with the other arguments I have raised, it can easily be argued that English systematically degrades and devalues women.
In conclusion, I believe that many features of the English language do degrade females, and the problem lies with the fact most of us do not realise we are using sexist lexis, terminology and phraseology because they are so firmly embedded in the everyday language used by society. However, the ‘politically-correct’ era is dawning on Britain at present, and the public is becoming more aware of sexist speech as well as lexis that discriminates other groups of people. Gender-specific words are being discouraged by Government campaigns, even altering the curriculum so that young children are taught to refer to ‘police officers’ and ‘firefighters’ instead of ‘policemen’ and ‘firemen’. However, society is not prepared to change radically, as some feminist groups that tried to introduce vocabulary entirely unspecific to gender have discovered. Lexis such as ‘womyn’ to replace ‘women’, and ‘herstory’ to replace ‘history’ are widely unaccepted as part of the English language, and this is unlikely to change in the near future.
