3. Phenomena of sexism in the English language
3.1 The generic masculine
Sexism in language in general comes in three major forms: language ignores women; it defines women as less significant than men; and it completely opposes women. They can be located in the generic masculine terms.
3.1.1 Generic pronouns
Generic pronouns are pronouns that are said to refer, with equal likelihood, to women and men. But the English language ignores women by allowing masculine terms to be used specifically to refer to males and commonly to refer to human beings in general. The generic pronoun “he” is perhaps the most well known example of the gender-specific of sexist language, and is frequently referred to be “he/man” language. The most significant manifestation of the sexism is in the use of 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” are used not sex-specifically, but generically, that is, although the pronouns refer grammatically to the single male citizen, they should be taken to refer to both male and female citizens in general. On the formal occasions, ‘he’, ‘him’ or ‘his’ can be 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. |
