摘  要

男女两性在人类漫长的发展过程中共同承担着各种责任，但是，由于社会外界影响，女性的社会地位一直处于弱势，针对女性的性别歧视无处不在。语言可以折射出许多社会现象,性别歧视便是典型之一。自20世纪60年代起,英语语言中的性别歧视现象已成为语言学家研究的重点,直到如今,这一课题仍吸引着众多学者就此研究。性别歧视在不同的社会制度和国家中都不同程度地存在。作为一种普遍的社会现象,自然会在语言中得到折射。本文分析了这种现象产生的根源，包括历史原因、生理及心理因素与社会现实影响。从词汇贬低色彩、词汇顺序、其在职业和谚语表达中的体现这五方面介绍了英语语言中的性别歧视，叙述了女权运动对其发展的影响，总结了消除语言中性别歧视的方法。

关键词：英语语言；性别歧视；现象；原因；消除方法
 
Abstract

Men and women bear all kinds of responsibilities jointly in the long process of human development, such as giving rise to life and making the society develop. However, due to a variety of impacts from the public and the society, the social status of women has been at a disadvantage and the gender discrimination in daily life against women exists everywhere. Language can reflect a large number of social phenomena, and one of the most typical phenomena is sexism. Since the nineteen sixties, sexism in English language has remained a heated topic for linguists and researchers, and till these days it still attracts a lot of linguistic learners to make a study of it. Different social systems and different countries present it in different degrees. Sexism is referred to as a common social phenomenon, and of course it can be naturally reflected in language. The author makes an analysis of the roots of the phenomenon, including social historical cause, physiological and psychological factor and the influence of social factor. This paper presents the various forms of sexism in the British English language. The author describes them in detail, including the generic masculine terms, the depreciation in female language, word order, sexism in occupation and idiomatic phrases. And the paper goes into detail of the impact of the feminist movement. In the end the author summarizes the methods to eliminate the gender discrimination in the process of using the British English language.

Key words: English language; sexism; phenomena; causes; solutions

1  Introduction
Language, as one of the most important tools for communication, it is not only a kind of social phenomenon but also a mirror of the real world. It is obvious that more than half of human community’s members are female; however, our language is centered on the male portion of the population. The bias in language leads to a linguistic sexism. According to The New Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language, sexism means: attitudes or behavior based on traditional stereotypes of social roles; discrimination or prejudice based on a person’s sex, especially discrimination against women. In other word, Sexism is the belief that the members of one sex, usually women, are less intelligent or less capable than those of the other sex and are not treated equally.