Using Language Reform to Change Gender Attitudes
Using Language Reform to Change Gender Attitudes
If language mirrors the world, the generic use of masculine pronouns and other male-biased use of language in English would reflect a traditionally male-orientated view of the world, in which case it is interpreted as reinforcing the low status of women in the society (Crystal 368:1997). To please prescriptivists and feminists, Cheshire and Prentice endeavoured to argue that language reforms could change people¡¦s attitude towards sexual, and social equality. This is based upon an axiom that if languages influence human thoughts, the eradication of masculine bias in English language can alter people¡¦s attitude towards the social equality of females. A language reform, therefore, is suggested to be implemented so as to achieve sexual equality.
Language reform is the belief that changing people¡¦s way of speaking would change their way of thinking, that eliminating status distinctions in language would help to promote a more egalitarian society (Prentice 3:1994). Cheshire (19:1985) suggests there should be a conscious reform in the language to eliminate some masculine-biased words. She claimed that a galaxy of English words are semantically masculine-biased, for instances, master and mistress. Master carries many positive meanings with a sense of competence, authority and skills while its counterpart mistress accompanies a lot of negative meanings which reflects the subordinate position of females to males. The society has tolerated men for bias but not women. Prentice (3:1994) thereby propounds that the elimination of sexist terms such as generic ¡§her¡¨ and ¡§man¡¨ would achieve social equality. The first step is to achieve linguistic equality. Then since languages influence thought, changes in language can contribute to ideological change (Prentice 4:1994). Some feminist scholars further claims that the use of masculine generic terms perpetuates an androcentric view of the world, in which man is the norm and the female is deviant (Prentice 3:1994). Flaws may embed this claim as the use of generic masculine pronouns does not necessarily lead to an androcentic world: it may perpetuate an androcentric view but it does not perpetuate this view. Under no circumstances can anyone be sure that this view directly contributes to a patriarchal world which longer holds valid in a lot of modern cosmopolitans.
Reformists claimed that masculine generic terms are not in fact interpreted generically: when people encounter ¡§he¡¨ and ¡§man¡¨ in generic contexts, they do not think of sex-indefinite beings, nor even of males and females in equal number; rather...