Abstract:Language is a mirror of life, which can properly reflect the colorful social life. The society is the root of language. When embedded in social contexts, you can experience all aspects of language use by you own. Language is not an isolated phenomenon, but social activities in a certain social environment. It can be safely said that language and society are closely linked. The study of language sexism has been attached great concern in the academic world since the beginning of the 20th century. However it was not until the feminist movement of 1960s that language sexism has become the focus of linguists, especially feminist linguists. 

Markedness Theory was firstly put forward in the 1930s by the Prague School linguist-- Trubetzkoy. This theory is a linguistic theory which analyzes the asymmetry phenomenon of linguistic elements with the main features of “marked term” and “unmarked term”. Markedness theory is widely spread at all levels of language: phonology, vocabulary, grammar and so on. Its basic meaning is: in language system, unmarked items are more basic, natural, common, standardized, and routine and in line with the expectations of people than marked items while marked items are the opposite. Language sexism embodies the gender discrimination in society. As language sexism at vocabulary level is the most important part of language sexism, this essay will analyze language sexism at the vocabulary level from the point of view of Markedness Theory. The analysis of language sexism will be studied in four aspects, that is, word formation, semantics, word order and lexical collocation.

The author conducted a survey of two hundred foreign students whose mother tongue is English in Jiangnan University. This survey aims to investigate the choice of the epicene pronouns under different linguistic contexts. The survey reveals that whatever the linguistic contexts and antecedents are, boys and girls favor to use the pronoun he. This indicates that most nouns are associated with male image. This is the influence brought about from society and culture. Language, in return, consolidates the male-orientated society. In addition, male and female behave somewhat different regarding to the epicene pronoun choice under different linguistic environments. 

Keywords: Sexism; Markedness Theory; Vocabulary; Language strategies

Contents

中文摘要

Abstract

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION-1

1.1-The Objectives of This Study-1

1.2-Significance of the Study-1

1.3-Organization of the Thesis-2

Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW-3

Chapter 3 MARKEDNESS THEORY AND LINGUISTIC MARKEDNESS IN SEXIST LANGUAGE-5

3.1 Markedness Theory-5

3.1.1 Concept of Markedness Theory-5

3.1.2 Classification of Markedness-5

3.2 Linguistic Markedness in Sexist Language-6

3.2.1 Lexicon Formation-6

3.2.2 Semantics-7

3.2.3 Lexical Order-8

3.2.4 Collocation-9

Chapter 4 RESEARCH METHOLOGY-11

4.1 Design of the Survey-11

4.2 Process of the survey-12

4.3 Processing of the survey-12

Chapter 5 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION-13

5.1 Difference of Epicene Pronouns Selection of Four Linguistic Environments-14

5.2 The Different Epicene Pronouns Choices of the Two Genders-14

Chapter 6 CONCLUSION-16

REFERENCES-17

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS-18