Relation Between Language & Sexism
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Fascination with the relation between language and sexism has waned considerably in the last decade. Throughout the the 1970's, as the Women's Movement gained momentum, the necessity for language reform was taken as an article of faith. Considerable attention focused on the imbalanced reference to men and women in language. Not only did masculine pronouns function in English as the generic forms, but the language had a way of implicitly diminishing women and the feminine. A crusading spirit animated discussion in the social sciences and in philosophy about the import of the distinctions language made between men and women. Perhaps because of the changes that have occurred since then, and perhaps because a retreat from reform, the sexism of language rarely occasions intense interest any more. There was a time when the effect of linguistic conventions on thinking about men and women occupied a central place in the conversation of educated people. On college campuses, feminists campaigned to wipe out overtly sexist terminology. Women were genuinely (and justifiably) angry at the routine use of language that demeaned women. Up to that time few men or women had questioned the social inequality of the sexes. It became widely recognized that the imbalance of power between men and women was clearly and strongly mirrored in a large array of linguistic conventions. The sexist oppression of language can take several forms. The most obvious, and the first to bec
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biscuits in the oven, and your buns into bed," a line from a Kinky Friedman song. Neither true nor false, the lyric manifests the overtly sexist attitude that women are merely useful objects, designed on the one hand for cooking and cleaning, and on the other for having sex. Another type of sexist utterance is literally true, in some sense, but is gratuitously sexist. Such statements could be made in ways that are not sexist, but they include general and perhaps partly hidden presuppositions about women; statements of this type involve "untoward implications." As Grim suggests, "Niggers will benefit from improvements in medicine," is an overtly racist statements that is also obviously true; it is overtly racist because it includes the gratuitous use of a pejorative term when such expressions as "African Americans" or "blacks" would have done just as well. In the same way, "Broads will benefit from improvements in medicine," is overtly sexist; there is no reason for the substitution of "broads" for "women" except for the purpose of demeaning women. Some sexist statements are trivially true, according to Grim, and are uttered chiefly for the purpose of conveying a sexist tone: "If broads deserve what they get, they deserve
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Approximate Word count = 2581
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)
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