Language and Gender.

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Language and Gender

The idea that language can be used as an instrument of oppression is one that is held by many critics of varying focus who stress the fact that language is both an instrument of social constraint and a means of resisting that constraint. It is an issue deeply embedded in the literary theory of gender and sexuality, race and nationality, and even social class. The idea of feminist criticism, where language is identified as one of the means through which patriarchal values are both maintained and resisted. Feminists are concerned with two main ways in which they claim women are oppressed by language, the first of which is the idea of male dominated language.

The issues can be noted in such minor parts of grammar such as pronouns but these are quite important in representing gender. A perfect example of this is in phrase "his and hers" (normally referring to something such as bath robes belonging to a couple). Here the masculine pronoun his is placed before the feminine pronoun. Many could say that this is sexist but it simply is due to the history of male domination in the English language.

There are many ways in which our language appears to devalue women. If, for example, you take the number of insulting terms for women and compared them to the number of insulting terms for men you will notice a drastic difference. Julia Stanley found that there were 220 words for a sexually promiscuous woman but only 20 for a man. Many degrading terms that are used to describe women have no male alternative, words like 'bitch' or 'slut'. Many of the words used for women are associated with either animals or have sexual orientations. Almost all the words are monosyllabic and incredibly harsh sounding. Just from hearing the sound of the words, their phonological pronunciation, gives you an idea of how insulting they are meant to be.
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Brooks (1983), Dayhoff (1983), Hyde (1984) all researched the reaction to the idea of the generic 'he', where the default assumption is that someone is male or masculine. Their research suggests that men feel included and women feel excluded, in some cases alienated. The generic 'he' is the theory that 'he' has gained common usage through history. However, the common usage of this term can cause women to feel excluded by the term, men to feel subject to prejudicial treatment by language (i.e. when talking about criminals, drug-users etc), men to be seen as the standard by which ...

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