Language and gender Flashcards
Lexical asymmetry?
Pair of words which have similar meaning but aren’t equally balanced
eg Master - Mistress
mistress is perceived more sexual
BY MURIEL SCHULZ (1975)
Marked terms?
Suggests job roles are gender specific
Terms like fireman, policeman -links back to historical context that women never had this job opportunity
marked -policeman ,male nurse
unmarked-police officer , nurse
-also ‘Family man’ suggests its not normalised to be family oriented
Terms of endearment?
-GODDARD(1983)
-informal terms of adress like sweetpea,honeypie, sugar,cheif ,boss
- many women feel patronised (context is important though)
Sexist langugage(connotations of gender)
Eg a person who shreiks/nags= women
swaggers/strides=men
Matronym
Names that reflect female lines of inheritance (from someones mother)
Patronyms
Names that reflect male line of inheritance (from father)
male as the norm syndrome
JULIA STANLEY(1973)
Men,mankind,he -may imply automatically that women are involved
eg men have always worshiped gods
‘two-man tent’
‘man up’
Could imply is making women more invisible or making man as the superior sex
Evidence for male as the norm
Men themselves recognised leaving women out in language in most important areas of public life
Dale spender- relates how most primary school teachers in 60s were female, articles used feminine pronoun she to reference to them
Womxn
Intersectional feminism introduced coined term, an alternative spelling that avoids the use of man or men
where do man and woman derive from?
Man- germanic “mann” meant humand kind or a person
Woman- old english”wifmon” meaning wife man or mans wife
Sex discrimination act
(1975)
It became illegal to write a job advertisement in a way that implied people of only one sex could apply
Headmaster/headmistress
barman/barmaid
waiter/waitress
nanny
chairman
