Possibility Of A Gender Neutral Language English Language Essay

Possibility Of A Gender Neutral Language English Language EssayAs the story in the defy of Genesis goes God created man and then created women. This joke makes fun of this and is an practice of sexist lyric because it represents men in a light of inadequacy comp bed to women. But, for any joke that represents men in this light in that respect is an even greater amount of dustup that is used to discriminate against women. Lu Min (2009) explains that sexist language is that which uses words, idioms, and expressions that unnecessarily differentiate between women and men or exclude, trivialize, or diminish either gender(26). Phrases such as best man for the job or occupational titles such as policeman or fireman are masculine in their description. This sort of language excludes women who could in fact be the best mortal for the job or similarly, a police officer or firefighter.Language is always changing and in fact in recent years in that location has been a push for more gend er-neutral language as opposed to the sexist language that is already in place. Leaper and Bigler (2004) explain that there has been a pillow slip in peoples speech and writing away from the generic wine use of the masculine pronouns he and masculine compound nouns such as chairman. Instead, it is now common to find people using gender-inclusive language such as he or she or chair someone (138). There is some debate on whether we should comport a gender-neutral language or non. Those in support of a gender-neutral language feel that if this were put into place there would be equality for everyone. Those who are against changing the language that is already in place argue that phrases such as you guys or mankind are already considered gender-inclusive because they refer to all people regardless of gender. They solely follow these words, phrases, and expressions as a quirk in the English language. While there are several languages that use masculine forms such as Chinese, Spanis h, and Italian, the tenseness of my paper will be on English in various parts of the world. I believe that the current masculine forms of language are not inclusive and that there should be more of a push for gender-neutral language whenever possible.Changes in language will inevitably take course through the length of time and if more people who speak English become aware of the gender-bias that currently is in place eventually we may be able to entertain a language that is more gender-inclusive. From my research, Ive observed that there is currently a trend of making language more inclusive. For example, in America in a study done at Virginia Commonwealth University, researchers undercoat that there was consciousness of gendered-biased language as being sexist. Similarly, young people in Australia who speak English, since the 1980s, have been pushing for more generic phrases when referring to individuals. In Hong Kong, speakers of English prefer a masculine form of language a lone through studying college students they have found that feminist movements in the West are having great impacts on the way young people speak.Deborah Cameron (1992) cites Robin Lakoffs Language and Womans Place which asserts that there is a feature of speech register or womens language consisting of certain linguistic gestures and connoting tentativeness, deference, and lack of informantity. Women are tenderized into using this style of speech as part of their subordinate hearty position (15). This is what experts would classify as the dominance approach because it demonstrates a power/powerless relationship among men and women. Another approach that Cameron cites is the difference approach which claims that differences in the speech behaviors between men and women come about due to the differences in socialization. As the author puts it, in most cultures there is still considerable social segregation of the sexes, and children learn their conversational strategies for the m ost part in single-sex peer groups. Research suggests that these are organized differently for the two sexes (15). Leaper and Bigler (2004) invoke the proceeding of Whorfian who says that language shapes thought (131). More specifically, they argue that some previous research supports the notion that the use of gendered language and having gender-stereotypic thoughts are reciprocally related (131). This goes back to the example of occupational title such as policeman, congressman, or waitress as having to do with the particular person in that position.As I mentioned earlier there is a group of individuals who believe that the English Language is already gender-inclusive. To this group of individual the phrase man would be used as a content of classifying both men and women such as the bourne mankind. This is illogical for several reasons. For example, if we take this idea of the verge man encompassing both males and females and apply it to a similar set of words we quickly find that it does not hold. We can say that a miniature poodle and an alligator are both animals. The term animal like man is being used in a generic sense. It would be correct to say that every miniature poodle is an animal. It would as well as be correct to say that every alligator is an animal. While at a park you may hear someone say I see an animal. There is no real need to specify whether that animal is an alligator or a dog if that person is just making an observation. There are certain times, however, that this information may be useful. If someones life was being threatened by an alligator you may hear another individual warm the person about to be attacked by saying Thats an alligator instead of just using the generic animal.If we take the generic term person which can nasty either a male or female and use it in the following sentence This person is having a spoil we would assume that this person is a female. To say that this man is having a baby would not only sound funny but it would also be incorrect. Men simply cannot have babies. So, if the term man was generic in what it refers to, either males or females, it would be acceptable to say that man had a baby. Again, we run into a problem of the term not being generic in what it is referring to and thus proves that the term man does not subsume both terms of describing gender. Kenichi Namai (2000) cites a study by Greenbaum and Quirk that explains that in English, gender is not a feature of nouns themselves (as in such languages as German or Russian). Rather, it relates directly to the meanings of nouns, with particular reference to biological sex (771). What the author is basically arguing is that English should not show any grammatical agreements between terms such as those that are used to refer to gender. In the article, Namai gives the example sentence he hit herself (773). This sentence is incorrect for what Namai explains as not being a syntactic disagreement with the antecedent and reflexive but says that the conflict arises from a disagreement between the antecedents in terms of sex (774). So if we refer back to the problem of the sentence that man had a baby we see that the problem arises from a disagreement in terms of sex. This would mean that the identification of man being inclusive of all genders is incorrect.Jochnowitz (1982) cites a similar lineage from Robin Lakoff who says My feeling is that this area of pronominal neutralization is both less in need of changing, and less open to change, than many of the other disparities that have been discussed earlier, and we should maybe concentrate our efforts where they will be most fruitful (200). This is strike because this article is written as Jochonowitz claims from a feminist perspective, yet the author Lakoff does not advocate abandoning indefinite he (200). Murdock and Forsyth (1985) in a discussion of Lakoff say that Lakoff would agree that the generic he does refer more to men than to women, but notes tha t the long-range consequences of the oft-used phrase may be fairly trivial (40). The two studies by Murdock and Forsyth were conducted to define reactions to gender-biased language empirically (39). What they aimed at finding out, as the title of their work suggests, is gender-biased language considered sexist. In the first study individuals were asked to evaluate the sexism in several sentences that contained no bias, used words as man or he in the generic sense, or referred to women in an unfair, stereotypical manner (39). The second study focused on examining reactions in a more naturalistic context by petition respondents to evaluate an essay written using all plural pronouns, generic pronouns, or generic pronouns plus evaluative stereotypic phrasings (39). What Murdock and Forsyth discovered was that the reactions to gender-biased language were interpreted as being sexist. This goes back to the original argument that gender-biased language is in fact not inclusive of both sexe s.Another particular finding for Murdock and Forsyth that is surprising is that all do not agree concerning the sexist nature of masculine-biased language (47). Lead this to Hong Kong English Australian English Look for Strahan Discussion Note end