WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE ENLISH LANGUAGE AS SEXIST?

JUSTIFY Sexist languages are words and phrases that demean, ignore, or stereotype members of either sex or that needlessly call attention to gender. Most sociolinguists believe that there is an amount of sexism in most languages spoken across the world. Sexist language also presents stereotypes of both females and males, sometimes to the disadvantage of males, but more often to the disadvantage of females. Thus sexism is seen universally in all languages. Yes, I think the English language is sexist and this piece of extract will seek to justify my reasons for making this assertion. Common forms of sexism in English include the use of 'man' and 'he / him / his' as genericsthat is, nouns and pronouns referring to both men and women the use of suffixes -man, -ette, -ess, -trix in occupational nouns and job titles. To start it all, we would look at the use of the generics he, man English does not possess a third person singular pronoun which is gender neutral. Instead the 'masculine' pronouns 'he' is generally used to refer to both men and women. This is confusing and inaccurate and, as well, makes women invisible. Consider this example: Asantewaa fought at the side of Asante, he was brave during the war. We want to hire the best men we can get for the job. In the first example the underlined sentence sounds absurd, since everybody knows Asantewaa is a girls name and some ladies are also called Asante. In the second, the problem is that we cannot know the exact sex of the persons they want to hire. They may want only girls, or both sexes, but they simply use man here. In English language, there are many words, which are clearly male-orientated in that they contain the element man while they can in fact apply to both sexes, For example: chairman,

foreman, freshman, policeman, mailman. When these words are used in any context, they represent both the male and the female sexes but mainly it is the thought of a male that comes to mind which relegates the women to the background.

Also sexism is shown in that, some of the noun feminine gender can only be obtained by adding a certain bound morpheme to the noun. Such as: male-female, man-woman, prince-princess, godgoddess, author-authoress, hero-heroine among others. To add to that, the name of some professions, are basically of common gender, namely, they can be applied to both sexes. However, people usually will habitually associate them only with male. As a result, we have to add woman before those names if we want to refer to female of those professions. Example: Doctor-Woman doctor, Professor-Woman professor.

To end it all, one tendency involves words that are clearly restricted in reference to one sex or the other, with female words tending to have less favorable meanings. A classic pair is master and mistress, where the male meaning is good and the female is bad; specifically, a mistress but not a master is a partner for extra-marital sex. Thus mistress is used when it has to do with extra-marital affairs. All in all, sexism in language is a social problem, since it is the reflection of human beings thoughts. As we know, language is a comparatively stable system. Much of its reduction in sexist language appears to be taking place as an unconscious reflection of social and attitudinal changes. Therefore, to eliminate the sexist language, we should above all eliminate the concept of prejudice in human beings thoughts.

REFERENCE Wardhaugh, Ronald, 1986, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics Journal of Language and Linguistics, Volume 5 Number 1 2006, ISSN 1475 8989 Nilson, Alleen Pace and Haig Bosmajian, H Lee Gershung, Julia P Stanley, Sexism and Language, Iuinois, NCTE,1977