English reflection (23-27/9/13)

After we touched a little on Language and Gender this week. I used to only have clear examples of the implication of gender in profanity as demonstrated in our semantic fields activity on Wednesday. Many profanity words were specific to a gender and that was my first idea of the implication of gender in English.

However, I realize that it's not only profanity or certain words but whole sentences itself could be sexist as we did the activity on Thursday by 'neutralizing' gender specific terms and sentences such as postman to postal worker, housewife to homemaker and how making certain words plural such as "doctor" to "doctors" changes it to a noun hence not needing to specify a specific gender to associate it with.

I was surprised when we learnt various terminologies such as diminutive suffixes as I've always seen these words but have only seen them in a new light. For example, the usage of 'ess' and 'ette' at the end of words do add a feminine emphasis but I never knew it also make some lesser, smaller and more inferior in the the example we use which was "kitchenette". Generic terms such as 'man' use in 'mankind' to describe the race of humans including women also struck me as even the term "woman" has "man" in it hence I question the involvement of this gender-specific term ("man") in general terms such as mankind. This certainly made me feel disempowered as a female seeing terms such as described above not prioritizing the role in women and treated with a sense of disregard.

On the hand, I also came to realize lexis asymmetry serves as a concrete evidence that women and men  need different ways of address as some words can't be generalized for both. For example, the word buff would be associated with positive values for males but when a female is called buff, it would seem live a derogative term.

Learning about language and gender is certainly interesting as we observe the cultural and societal implications towards genders in language as I feel like I am reading the 'in-between', subtle lines of communication and grow a sense of awareness towards gender biasses in language. I hope that through learning about language and gender, I would be more cautious in the way I think and speak as I believe this would lead to a sense of better respect towards others.