The study of Sexual Discrimination in English and Chinese Culture英语专业毕业论文.docx

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1、分类号 单位代码 密 级 学 号 本科毕业论文（设计）题 目The study of Sexual Discrimination in English and Chinese Culture作 者院 (系)专业班级学 号指导教师答辩日期年 月 日 摘 要语言是现实世界的一面镜子,它反映了现实世界的种种美丑好坏,是当今社会最真实的写照。因此，社会中的性别歧视也反应在了语言中。性别歧视是中西方社会中很敏感却很受关注的研究话题，性别歧视主要反应的是社会中男性对女性的歧视，是指社会对女人的不公平对待，这种歧视引来了很多语言学家的关注和研究。 英语和汉语是中西方国家中最典型的语言，语言歧视在中西方语言中

2、都得到了充分的体现，反映了中西方国家对女人的偏见。本文将从文化的视角下，对比研究中西方国家语言中的构词造字、词的搭配、词的内涵意义、句法标记及谚语俗语等中存在的性别歧视，系统地分析解释英、汉两种语言中的性别歧视现象，并深入探讨文化根源对语言中性别歧视影响，探索造成这种性别歧视的原因并对改善与消除语言中的性别歧视提出一些看法和建议。本论文将分为五个部分进行行文，第一部分将简单介绍本论文的研究背景，研究目的和研究现状，第二章将描述语言中性别歧视现象在中西方国家中的历史和研究现状，第三章将探讨文化和语言之间的关系以及文化对语言中的性别歧视的影响。第四章将分别从构词，造句，词的内涵，称谓等方便重点分析

3、英汉语言中的性别歧视歧视现象，第五章将对语言的改革和性别歧视现象提供意见，使中西方女性能够被尊重和被公平对待，实现真正的男女自由平等。为社会的和谐发展做出贡献。关键词：性别歧视 ；英语和汉语语言；文化AbstractLanguage is a mirror of the real world, which can reflects the beauty, ugliness good or bad of the society. It is the true portrayal of todays society. Therefore, gender discrimination in soci

4、ety is also reflected in the language. Gender discrimination is very sensitive and popular research topic in the western world. It is the reaction of male discrimination against women and expresses the unfair treatment to women which attracts the attention of many linguists and researchers. English

5、and Chinese is the most typical language of China and western countries, language discrimination in Chinese and western languages have been fully reflected the prejudice against women in China and western countries. Under the culture background, this paper will comparatively study the language discr

6、imination between Chinese and English based on the formation of word, word collocation, word meaning, salutation and proverb and so on. It will systematically analysis and explain the gender discrimination phenomenon in both English and Chinese languages, and explore the cultural causes of sexism in

7、 language. Finally, it will put forward some opinions and suggestions to eliminate gender discrimination in language. This article is divided into five parts; the first part will simply introduce the research background, purpose and significance of the research. The second chapter will describe the

8、history of language gender discrimination phenomenon in western countries and China, and present the current research situation. In the third chapter, this paper will discuss the relationship between culture and language, and how the culture influence gender discrimination in language. Then the main

9、 part will focus on the gender discrimination in word formation, sentence, the connotation of word, appellation in English and Chinese. The final part will put forward suggestions to reform the gender discrimination in language and make woman to be respected and be treated fairly to realize the real

10、 equality between men and women, which can contribute to the harmonious development of society.Key words: Sexual Discrimination; English and Chinese language; CultureIVIntroduction 1.1the Research BackgroundSex discrimination indicates an injustice to one group or it means there are differences abou

11、t two gender groups. In the modern society, sex discrimination indicates the injustice to woman. As a disease of human society, regardless of the east or west, gender discrimination has a profound cultural origin. Language can reflects the culture and religion of the society, so it also reflects the

12、 sex discrimination in both English and Chinese. In the early society, the famous linguist Jesperson shows that there are a lot of English nouns refer to the phenomenon of men. In 20 centuries, one of the news media in New York opens to discuss gender discrimination in English language reform, which

13、 has attract many linguists attention and makes people begin to think seriously about these problems. It also attracts chinas researchers interest in the language sexism.In the modern society, there are more and more countries and people pursue the equality between men and women to build the free, e

14、qual and beautiful world, but the discrimination is root in the language and not so easily to get rid of it, which has take some problems to the reformers. So this paper will have comparative study on gender discrimination in English and Chinese and find out some ways to reform it. 1.2 The Research

15、ObjectiveIn order to eliminate the gender discrimination in language and protect the modern women from the sexism, the main goal of this paper is to find the effective way to reform the language. It will attempt to explore the culture root of the sexism in the English and Chinese. Firstly, it will f

16、igure out the sexism in both Chinese and English word, sentence and appellation and analysis it based on the culture factor. Finally, it will put forward some effective ways to eliminate gender discrimination in Chinese and English from the linguistic perspective as well as take measures to improve

17、womens social status.1.3 Literature Review1.3.2 Sexism Studies in EnglishWestern countries studies on sexism in language have a longer history than China. Concern with the linguistic treatment and representation of women is said to be a characteristic of the second wave of the womens movement which

18、started in late 1960s and early 1970s, mainly in the west of English speaking countries. Feminist scholarship and investigations into the sexism in language started in the mid-1970s.Early works on sexism in language involved documenting the various ways in which language could be understood as being

19、 sexist (Casey Miller & Kate Swift, 1976; Spender. D, 1980; Stanley, 1978, Schulz. M, 1975). They have pointed out that the English language is inherently sexist because it carries certain assumptions about gender roles.Since the 1980s feminism has stimulated further research on womens ways of using

20、 language and the extent of differences between the sexes in their uses of language. A feminist orientation in linguists and language researchers has also been responsible for theoretical re-examining of previous findings and explanations of gender differences in Language use, for example, Jennifer

21、Coates (1986) &Deborah Cameron (1991). The emergence of the current thought within academic circlewhich can be loosely called feminist postmodernist led to different ways of thinking about gender.r and to a further emphasis on the importance of language and linguistic theory. Language was and is see

22、n by many feminists as a powerful instrument of patriarchy: for example, feminist, Dale Spender spoke of the English language as being “man-made and as being an important contributor to womens oppression (Spender, 1980).From the late 1980s to 1990s, most of the linguists made a deeper research on th

23、e difference of the language of the males and the females. In this period, the research of gender language can be considered as systematic.1.3.1 Sexism Studies in ChineseUnder the influence of the western scholars, some Chinese scholars have started to pay attention to Chinese language and gender di

24、scrimination; people began to be academically aware of sexism in the Chinese language during the New Culture Movement in early twentieth century. In 1918., the Chinese character “ 她 “for she was then invented by Liu Bannong. It was the first time women were granted as an independent identity in lang

25、uage(熊文华,1997).In 1984, one of the Chinese researchers offers a comprehensive analysis of the various forms of sex differentiation in the Chinese language. (Shi, 1984:207-228), which includes the logographic writing system of Chinese, Lexical structures, Convention of naming, deprecating terms for w

26、omen in proverbs and classics, Syntactic structure and language style and so on, Word choice, Syntactic structure and language style, Phonology , Conversational topics and patterns, Nonverbal behavior. The first four categories deal with what is reflected in the language about sexes (mostly about wo

27、men), and the rest five talk about the different ways in which men and women use language, both verbal and nonverbal, i.e. language by sexes. While the last eight topics have all been addressed in the studies of many Indo-European languages, the first onethe logographic writing system of Chineseis a

28、 truly unique feature of the Chinese language. Shi (1984) also concludes that sexism in Chinese language ties closely with the Chinese culture, and it will continue to exist until women gain an equal footing with men in the society.But their studies have not compared sexisms of English and Chinese f

29、rom the perspective of similarities and differences deeply, and they havent systematically proposed how to eliminate sexism in Chinese though there have been some strategies for reducing sexism in English. The Relationship between Language and Culture3.1 Definitions of Language and CultureBecause th

30、e further discussion is related to the relationship between language and culture, firstly, it will give the definition to language and culture.3.1.1 The definition of languageWhitney states that language is the element of the culture; it is ability to obtain and only Human beings have it. The differ

31、ence between the language and other human expression tool is that the immediate motivation of language is communication. (whitney1875:291)Lenin indicates that language is the most important human communication tool.(Lenin, 1916:1916)Stalin says that language is a tool used by people to communication

32、 with each other and exchange ideas, finally to achieve mutual understanding.(Stalin 1953:20) The most basic sense is that language is a set of symbols and the rules for combining those symbols that are used and understood by a large community of people, which is put forward by Xu (许力生, 2004: 79) To

33、 sum up, language has the communicative function, projection function, thinking function and indicator function. Language is the most important human communication tool; it is the expression way of communicating. People use language to transfer the achievements of human civilization. It is a mediati

34、on of each others expression, when it works on objective world system; it is a tool of things cognition. It is a part of culture. When it is applied to culture, it is the carrier and container of cultural information.3.1.2 The definition of cultureThere are many definitions suggested for culture. As

35、 early as 1952, Kroeber and Kluckhohn listed 164 definitions of culture that they found in the anthropology literature (Samovar, Porter 2000:36). And, many new definitions have appeared since. The nineteenth century British anthropologist Sir Edward Tylor first defined culture as everything human be

36、ings made and taught to future generation.Broadly speaking, culture is a social phenomenon and historical phenomenon. It is the precipitate of social history. Specifically, culture is outside of the condensation in the material is free from material, can be passing on state or national history, geog

37、raphy, local conditions and customs, traditions, way of life, literature and art, behavior standards, way of thinking, values, etc., is a universal recognition in communication between human ideology of an inheritance.3.2 The Relationship between Language and CultureLanguage is a mirror which reflec

38、ts the culture of then nation, reveals the content of national culture. Culture is a social phenomenon which is formed by people through their creative activities. In the early 20s century, American linguist (1884-1939) Edward Sapir points out that there is something behind language and language can

39、t exist without culture in his book language. From the perspective of culture, the relationship between language and culture can be roughly from the following three ways:3.2.1 Language is a part of culture. It has the characteristics of culture. From the perspective of the connotation of culture, it

40、 has two aspects includes human material wealth and spiritual wealth. And language is a kind of spiritual wealth created by human in the process of evolution; it is a part of culture. Moreover, culture is the common wealth of the whole nation, so is language. H. Goodenough points out that a societys

41、 language is an aspect of the culture of the society. So the relationship between language and culture is part and the overall .Meanwhile, cultural can influence language. The influence of culture on language is also significant. In Manohuria, China, there are many old people can speak simple daily

42、Japanese, this has a direct relationship with Japans colonial and invasion of northeast in the last century . Because of the colonial rule in the spread of the language is not a few, the reason why Hong Kongs official language is English is also because the colonial. 3.2.2 Cultural can influence sem

43、antics. In a single language, it is difficult to see clearly the true meaning of the word, but through the comparison of several languages, the internal relationship between culture and language will gradually clear up. In Chinese, words related to dog are negative. Such as: “狗仗人势” means threatening

44、 people under the protection of a powerful person. But in the English words or idioms related to dog shows the color of praise. Such as: clever dog (smart), lucky dog (lucky). 3.2.3 Cultural can influence pragmatics. In the aspect of pragmatics, the relationship between culture and language are clos

45、e, firm. For example, from the point of relatives appellation, in Chinese, about in-laws, consanguinity and generational are obvious, such as: dads brother and brother, my mothers brothers and sisters all have their own name, and in the English language, uncle, uncle, uncle, uncle referred to as unc

46、le. Again, such as, Chinese culture pays attention to pecking order, and junior. So on the language is also special emphasis on the pecking relations. In Chinese, ask elder age must use personal introduction, the category of the word old; Ask people younger than himself, or of peers can use how old

47、are you?, how old are you? Such statements. In western countries, however, the language is not the idea that approaches.In English, asks about age, and young is only one side, namely How old are you.The sexism in language is also a mirror to the culture and is a reflection of culture. The following

48、part of the thesis focuses on the cultural factors of sexism in English as well as in Chinese. 3.2 Cultural Factors of Sexism in English3.2.1 Religion factorIn the West, religious language and traditions often excludes, discriminates against women. The image of male is applied to portray spiritual matters, whereas female image is used mainly related to earthly matters like sexuality (positive sexualitythe image of virgin, negative sexuality is describe the female as a whore). In the bible, accord