Abstract and Key Words

Abstract: Language is the mirror of society. As a social problem with a long history, sexism exists in almost every language, reflecting the discrimination from which women suffer in a society dominated by men. With the rise of feminism, the issue of how to eliminate the sexism against women has attracted more and more attention. The present research analyzes the sexism in English vocabulary from the aspects such as word formation, sentence structure and meaning, then tries to investigate the possible causes that lead to the sexism in English vocabulary from the historical background, religion, social reality, and then, explores the ways to avoid sexism in English vocabulary. The present research tries to offer some help for English learners to better understand and master the English vocabulary.

Key words: sexism; English vocabulary; feminism

摘要：语言是社会的一面镜子。作为一种由来已久的社会问题，性别歧视几乎在所有语言中都存在，反应了妇女在社会中受到的歧视。随着女权运动的兴起，消除性别歧视引起越来越多的关注。本研究从词法，句法，语义等方面分析了存在于英语词汇中的性别歧视现象，然后试图从历史背景，宗教和社会现实等方面探究其原因，并试图找出规避英语词汇中的性别歧视的方法。通过本研究，试图为学习者更好地理解和掌握英语词汇提供一些帮助。

关键词：性别歧视;英语词汇;女权运动

1. Introduction
Language is the instrument of communication. Also, it is the undertaking of the culture served by the language. Sex inequality is a social phenomenon which has a long history. It can be found in the language and culture of the society. Sex inequality,or Sexism in the language is based on the theory of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Sapir and Whorf believe that language filters people’s perception and the way they categorize their experiences. According to this opinion, linguists believe that the language, which is produced in the environment of religions and hierarchy systems, reflects the nature of masculine.
As early as 1922, Otto Jesperson, a distinguished Danish linguist, described the sex differences in the language from the points of words and sentences. In 1930s, Greenberg, a noted linguist, first introduced the “markedness theory”. The concepts of “marked” and “unmarked” deeply show the Sexism in English. In general, most nouns which refer to men are unmarked, while the nouns which refer to women are marked. In the other words, in most occasions, nouns which refer to women are based on nouns which refer to men, and formed with derivational affixes. In the late 1960s, many researchers attempted to apply sociolinguistics to the analysis of language and gender. In the later ten years, “male and female language behavior” had been studied in many schools. Furthermore, many noted researchers like Lakoff, Trudgill, Thorne and Henley, were making efforts in researching the social reasons for the language and gender, which advanced the research in this field. In the end of 1980s, Bolinger defined this difference as Sexism.