3.1.2 Generic nouns
Another well-known example of generic masculine terms is “man”. The definitions of “man” in Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary (Extended fourth edition) are as follows: ① adult male human being; ② human being of either sex; person ③ [sing](without the or a) the human race; mankind. There are some examples taken from the dictionary. ① All men must die. ②Growing old is something a man has to accept. ③Man is mortal. From these definitions and examples, it is easy to see that “man”, and “men” can be used generically to refer to both male and female. But ‘woman’ and ‘women’ cannot be employed in reference to men.
This also reminds people of the famous saying from the US Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal.” Should people argue that the “men” does not include women because women were not given the right to vote in the eighteenth century America? A clear explanation of this phenomenon may be found in sentence like:
(1) Man is a social animal.
(2) Men remake nature.
When seeing the three sentences, speakers of English are able to readily interpret “man” and “men” as meaning “the human race”; “humankind”. If not, the two sentences could be changed into
(3) Woman is a social animal.
(4) Women remake nature.
Of course, they are grammatically well formed; semantically, however, the third sentence has the defect of being partial, and the fourth sentence is very ridiculous.
From above, one can know that in English using “man” or “men” to indicate “the human race”, neglects the fact that men and women are equal in the society. By contraries, they treat man as the center of society, an embodiment of criterion and totally ignore the existence of woman. There are many other generic masculine terms such as man-to-man, prehistoric man, brotherhood, chairman, and policeman.
3.1.3 Women being attached to men
The English language distinguishes women’s courtesy titles on the basis of marital status, but not those of men. There is only one form of address for men, Mr., regardless of martial status. However, the martial status of women is distinguished by Miss and Mrs., reflecting the notion that whether or not a woman is in a marriage. This discriminatory practice is said to mark the availability of women in terms of marriage (sex) and reinforces the view that a woman is the property of a man (either her father or her husband). When a woman has been married, people address her as “Mrs. plus her husband’s surname”. That is to say, if a woman is married to somebody, she has no right to be treated like an unmarried lady. As to a man, that’s a different matter. For example: In English-speaking countries, you can often hear someone call the wife of John Smith “Mrs. John Smith”. There is no exception of famous Madame Curie, Mrs. Thatcher, and Mrs. Gandhi. Mrs. Thatcher is the former Prime Minister in UK. However, few people know her own family names. Mr. Clinton’s wife, Hilary Clinton, as a liberated woman, kept her name Hilary Rodham after marriage. But in order to help her husband in the election, she had to change her name. From the address of men and women, one can clearly see the submissive position of women and women are merely an extension of their husbands or part of their husbands’ estate. This also reflects in the language. 3.1.4 Female as an exception
English itself has no difference of gender. But in this man-centered society, people is used to believing that prestige person are always males. However, a woman who once receives great popularity is regarded as a special exception.
Many professionals such as doctor, professor, engineer, lawyer, pilot, judge, surgeon can be used to indicate both males and females. But when indicating female’s position, professional, etc., these words are created by adding a bound morpheme or by combining them with a word referring to female. Because these satisfactory jobs are traditionally viewed as ones qualified only by males. Women are just the appendant to men. The words below can best illustrate it: |
