摘　要

英语中存在着明显的性别歧视现象，都是由于不同的社会地位，文化意识，社会偏见和一些传统观念造成的。性别歧视也由此作为一种历史文化现象深深扎根于英语中。本文叙述了英语中性别歧视的现象，也探索了其历史根源与文化根源。基于以上讨论，本文还着力探讨如何在生活中改变我们的语言习惯来弱化这种歧视并最终消除它。语言中的性别歧视的最终消亡取决于社会变化。只有改变社会结构，即男女真正拥有平等的地位，语言中的平等才能真正实现。

关键词：性别歧视；语言；社会；文化；历史

Abstract

Obviously, there exists remarkable sex-based discrimination in English, which is owing to different social status, cultural awareness, social prejudices and traditional concepts, etc. These differences make sexual discrimination lies deeply in English as a phenomenon of the history and culture thereof. This article describes the English manifestations of sexual discrimination. It also explores its historical origins and social origins. Based on the above discussion, the paper is contributed to probe into how to change our codes of language in daily life to reduce the discrimination and eliminate it ultimately. The eliminating of linguistic sexism lies in social change. Only by changing the social structure, that is, women and men hold really equal status, can language equality be truly achieved.

Key words: Sexual discrimination; language; society; culture; history

1 Introduction
This thesis mainly deal with the questions that what is the sexual discrimination in English and the causes of its historical and cultural reasons. Through this process we can find some words or phrases that we ignored but have directly discrimination towards females. And then we can propose some feasible strategies to efface the sex discrimination.
1.1 The definition of sex discrimination
In most cases, sex discrimination refers to the discrimination against females. The definition by Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary (2004: 485) is as follows: “sex discrimination is prejudice or discrimination against women on the basis of sex.” It is easy for us to see that there are some words in English clearly restricted in reference to one sex or the other, with female words tending to have less favorable meaning. We can also find it obvious that the examples as follows are typically used by those who claim that English is “sexist”. Man and mankind are used as terms to describe the human race, just as he is used as the unmarked third-person singular pronoun. This kind of inequality phenomenon in English is called sexism. Sexism refers to the idea or believes that women are less able than men, or the prejudice and discrimination against people because of their sex. “Therefore, it is of utmost importance for us to become aware of sex discrimination in English and to work out the possible solution of it.”