发布时间 : 星期日 文章An Analysis of Sexism in English and Chinese 论英语和汉语中的性别歧视 - 图文更新完毕开始阅读46f1233f69dc5022aaea009f
Tian Fu College of SWUFE An Analysis of Sexism in English and Chinese
or a third party to a family4--- in different contexts. Besides, bachelor and spinster are used to describe the marital status of a single man and woman. The former has another meaning referring to the first degree at college and university, the latter, different from the commendatory meaning of the former, has a connotative meaning that is specifically for a woman who is no longer young and seems unlikely ever to marry. Except for such words in pairs with derogatory meanings to female, slang, as an informal language ordinarily spoken by some particular groups of people, displays sexism in English, incisively and vividly. Talking about humiliating words and expressions, slang, in most cases, is involved with female. Hellcat, virago, vixen, bitch, slut, chippie, etc. are all to make a chump out of women, so how about men? Although there are some expressions to insult men, most of them have something, more or less, to do with women. Let’s take son of a bitch as an example. It insults women first then to reach the goal of humiliating men. Effeminate, womanish, hen-pecked resemble that in the same way. Other expressions with disparaging meaning, Black widow, Black Maria, Hurricane Sandy, so long as they are relevant to disasters or terrible characters, have to link up with female5.
45
. 于春迟，申葳 Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary [M]. 北京：外语教学与研究出版社. 2008 卢智慧, 浅析英汉语中的性别歧视现象, [D], 湖南：中南大学外国语学院, 2009
6
Tian Fu College of SWUFE An Analysis of Sexism in English and Chinese
II. Sexism in Chinese
China, a prestigious country with a longstanding reputation in the world, has over five thousand years’ history and fruitful culture represented by a substantial number of refined scholars and intellectuals in different kinds of fields. Confucian culture that hoists its own unique banner in China has enhanced the Chinese traditional value, Man superior to woman which was primarily established as patriarchal replaced matriarchal society and had gradually become a central ideology with the flourishing of the feudal system. It has a tremendous impact on Chinese people’s demeanor, lifestyle, and the unique language especially the Chinese characters, the only existing ideograph6. Accordingly, sexist phenomena in Chinese are much distinct and straightforward. 2.1 Formation of Chinese Characters
Similar to English, sexism exists in Chinese whose basic morphemes are the individual Chinese characters. Among the thousands of millions of Chinese characters, “女” (nv in pinyin, meaning “female”), a pictographic character, has the direct connection with gender bias in the language. Lots of words composed of “女” contain the contemptuous and disdainful meanings about women. For instance, “妓” (ji in pinyin) signifies a prostitute or a whore, “姘” (pin in pinyin) means to have unethical sexual
6
冯英杰, 英汉语言中的性别歧视现象及其文化根源, [D], 河南：许昌学院, 2009
7
Tian Fu College of SWUFE An Analysis of Sexism in English and Chinese
relationship with someone else rather than their spouse, “妒” (du in pinyin) means to be jealous of others, “婊” (biao in pinyin) is the equivalent of English word bitch and “奴” (nu in pinyin) “婢” (bi in pinyin) stands for a humble servant.
There are other characters with a derogatory sense indicating scorn and insult to female, such as “奸” “娼” “嫖” (usually used to show the illicit sexual behavior), “嫉” “婪” “妄” (associated with unhealthy and devious mental state). Female is not the only one who will have such immoral behavior and twisty mentality, but why do those disparaging expressions solely link with female other than both genders? It is apparent enough to see that formation of Chinese characters is depreciated for women and reveals sexism against women. However, many Chinese characters are not originally designed to insult female, but their sexism will show up as long as they combine a feminine term to form a phrase. Chinese people are likely to associate “流” (liu in pinyin) with “女” to express the vulnerability of women, and relate “老虎”(laohu in pinyin), the king in the forest, to “母” (mu in pinyin) to describe tough, aggressive and fierce women.
Furthermore, when mentioning some job titles like “教授（”professor in English）, and “法官”（judge in English）, bulks of people will automatically relate those titles to male as if only men are capable of handling challenging affairs. When people read or hear some sentences
8
Tian Fu College of SWUFE An Analysis of Sexism in English and Chinese
like my cousin is a police and my friend is an engineer, they are prone to refer these two job titles to male without asking whether the cousin and the friend here is a man or a woman. So, how do they name the female in the exactly same position and spot them during conversations? It is easy as they will just plus a “女” （female, lady or woman in English）in front of the occupational titles which will become: 女教授，女法官, 女警察， 女工程师 showing only women as exceptional. 2.2 Depreciated Women in Proverbs
Proverb is the essence of Chinese profound culture, the valuable result of human wisdom, and the embodiment of language. The cultural big shot in British literature, Shakespeare, has a famous proverb --- Frailty, thy name is woman--- indicating the weakness of female in society. In China, “male superior to female” is not only evidently reflected in the formation of Chinese characters but also in the proverbs and idioms7.
In the ancient China, girls of poor families could not attend school. While those of rich families might have opportunities to study in the academy, even though they were really good at poetry, the significant literature works and citing the classics, their parents would not feel proud of them because the customary value, “女子无才便是德” ( Innocence is
7
常敬宇, 《汉语词汇与文化》,[M], 北京：北京大学出版社, 1995
9