It is interesting to look at the ways in which sexism
is embedded and/or revealed linguistically, in both formal and informal speech.
The general public has become increasingly conscious of this, but there are
still some very common incidents of sexist language that are not hard to come
across in daily life. In The Guardian,
David
Marsh mentions some ways language use has assimilated to feminist activism over
the past several decades. One sign of the decrease in sexism in language is the
gender-neutralization of job titles: “policemen and woman police constables
have become police officers, firemen are now firefighters, male nurses are
nurses, postmen are postal workers, air hostesses have become cabin crew.”
Because women have gained more power in the professional world, the language
associated with these once male-dominated careers has had a corresponding
effect. However, there is still evidence of sexism in language, particularly in
the lack of a gender-neutral way of referring to a man or a woman in writing or
speech. Marsh points out that the generic masculine pronoun “he” is used
frequently to refer to anyone, male or female. Therefore, he recommends using
the singular “they” to avoid using sexist language.
Jennifer Klein
of Hamilton College says that although many people try not to be sexist in
their writing, it is sometimes difficult not to be because of the lack of this
gender-neutral pronoun. One tip that she recommends is, instead of using
language which is unnecessarily singular, writers or speakers should make their
subject plural. Using the aforementioned singular “they” is a way of doing so.
For example, instead of saying “When a student writes a blog post, he should
use correct grammar,” say “When students write a blog post, they should use
correct grammar.” Klein also states that certain words such as “mankind” are
sexist. “Mankind denotes the entirety of the human species, which obviously
includes both men and women. Instead, she suggests using inclusive words like
“humanity or “humankind” in its place.
Linguist Dennis Baron points out the historical point that people have been confronting the absence of a gender-neutral pronoun for over 150 years, and without any lasting or widespread success. He gives several examples of newspaper articles from the nineteenth-century which address this issue. What is interesting is that the lack of gender-neutrality is not only a bother to people concerned with the ethical issues of sexism, but it has been an annoyance to writers of all persuasions who simply think that the lack makes for awkward sentence-structure. So, as Baron writes, this is a "semantic black hole" into which all attempts at coining neutral pronouns get sucked and disappear forever. Some attempts include "per," "ons," "ith."
