t women. A chit was originally the young of a beast, came to mean a child, and nowadays means a silly girl. . . .
If such linguistic movements were to be charted comprehensively and in detail, we would have before us a mpa of the development of the double standard and the degradation of women. As long as the vocabulary of the cottage and the castle are separate, words like wench and madonna do not clash; when they do, both concepts suffer and woman is the loser.
In her focus on abusive, mainly sexual terms that describe women for which there are no equivalents describing men, Greer points up linguistic extremes, but the overriding point is that the wealth of pejorative terms for women reflects the prevalence of a pejorative conception of women in the culture. That the conception is located in the vernacular of sexuality seems an essential observation to make, even though there is a significant body of research that subtler forms of sex bias persist in the language that both reflect and perpetuate a fundamental inequality of social standing between men and women, with the female sex the less equal. Discussion of whether language does, can, or should change social arrangements, or whether the adjustment of social arrangements precedes changes in linguistic praxis has implications for both culture and language, as well as for linguistic research. The question can be framed with reference to Greer's analysis of language as a manifestation not merely of social bias against but of social contempt for women: To the degree women's social roles are valued upward, will the language surrounding them be changed as well? Alternatively, if the language itself is altered, will women's social roles change positively?
Research studies of the connection between language and social power focus on both social analysis and linguistic praxis. Researchers appear to agree that there are differences between the sexes where use or experience of the lang...