浅析英语中的性别歧视现象

　　Due to women's relative physical weakness and lowereducational background, they do primarily the low-status,low-paying jobs. Although men also have family roles, they aredefined primarily by their economic or occupational position.

　　Thus the sexism in the society has been in existence, theembodiment of which is necessarily the sexism of language.

　　(4) Psychological factorBecause of the social and cultural factors, women are alwaysconsidered to be the weak. People treat women as inferior tomen. They educate men to be manly, decisive, and brave whilewomen are required to be polite, conservative, obedient, andgentle. Because women are in subordinate status in thesociety, they have to constrain their emotion and give uptheir own need to meet the satisfaction of men. As timepasses, when speaking women pay more attention to the eleganceand standard of language than men. They use more pleasant andpolite words in the hope that they can receive other’sapproval. And they are taught to speak softly, to avoidcontradicting others, to be obedient in communication, and tobe aware of giving cues of strong confidence. They mouldthemselves to be inferior in their potential subconsciousness.[3] Therefore, women try their best tostrengthen their social status through their speech than mendo. The lower women’s position is, the more polite they are inthe face of others. And the standard language they use canshow their submission and politeness. This also suggests thatwomen are in a lower position in the society.

　　3. Phenomena of sexism in the English language3.1 The generic masculineSexism in language in general comes in three major forms:

　　language ignores women; it defines women as less significantthan men; and it completely opposes women. They can be locatedin the generic masculine terms.