浅析英语中的性别歧视现象

　　3.1.1 Generic pronounsGeneric pronouns are pronouns that are said to refer, withequal likelihood, to women and men. But the English languageignores women by allowing masculine terms to be usedspecifically to refer to males and commonly to refer to humanbeings in general. The generic pronoun “he” is perhaps themost well known example of the gender-specific of sexistlanguage, and is frequently referred to be “he/man” language.

　　The most significant manifestation of the sexism is in the useof generic masculine pronouns “he” and its variants “his”,“him” and “himself” in such sentences as:

　　(1) He who laughs last laughs best.

　　(2) Everyone must do his homework well.

　　(3) If anyone calls, tell him I will be back later.

　　(4) Everyone should learn to solve problems himself.

　　In the above examples, “he”, “his”, “him” and “himself” areused not sex-specifically, but generically, that is, althoughthe pronouns refer grammatically to the single male citizen,they should be taken to refer to both male and female citizensin general. On the formal occasions, ‘he’, ‘him’ or ‘his’ canbe used to refer to such indefinite pronouns as each,everyone, everybody, no one, someone, anyone and so on. While‘she’, ‘her’, ‘herself’ don’t have such usages.

　　3.1.2 Generic nounsAnother well-known example of generic masculine terms is“man”. The definitions of “man” in Oxford Advanced Learner’sEnglish-Chinese Dictionary (Extended fourth edition) are asfollows: ① adult male human being; ② human being of eithersex; person ③ [sing](without the or a) the human race;mankind. There are some examples taken from the dictionary. ①All men must die. ②Growing old is something a man has toaccept. ③Man is mortal. [4] From these definitions andexamples, it is easy to see that “man”, and “men” can be usedgenerically to refer to both male and female. But ‘woman’ and‘women’ cannot be employed in reference to men.