Covert Sexism in Mandarin Chinese
by David Moser
Introduction Western linguists have been studying various aspects of sexism in the English language for several decades. Following on the heels of influential works by Robin Lakoff (1975), and Miller & Swift (1977), and others, a host of researchers began to identify and catalog types of sexism manifested in features of language such as vocabulary, grammar, discourse, and even intonation. (For a good historical overview of sexism in English, see Baron, 1986. Other recent research includes Stanley, 1977a, 1977b; Spender, 1980; Graddol & Swann, 1989; Eakins & Eakins, 1978; Francine & Anshen, 1983; Hill, 1986; Sorrels, 1983, and others.) Recently scholars have turned their attention to sexism in Mandarin Chinese as well, finding strikingly similar sexist phenomena in linguistic aspects such as Chinese characters, vocabulary, idioms, and proverbs. (See Shih, 1984; Wang, 1986; Wu, 1991; Liu, 1991; Jung-Palandri, 1991; Chen, 1995; Moser & Chen, 1995, just to name a few.) The most notable treatment of sexism in Chinese is that of Farris (1988), whose work has greatly influenced this article.
Like other cultures, China has a long history of sexist social conventions, and the Chinese language is pervaded with evidence of these. Research in this area has usually sought to identify and catalog aspects of Chinese that embody these sexist cultural traditions, such as sexist idioms, demeaning words for wife, derogatory terms of address for women, or the large number of characters containing the female radical (女) with negative connotations. Such elements tend to be rather easily identifiable and have been some of the earliest aspects to be targeted for linguistic reform. (The Chinese Communist Party, for example, in their attempts to elevate the status of women and eradicate vestiges of feudalism, has from time to time officially discouraged use of pejorative terms of address for women and wives.) Notable contributions have already been made in such research, but there are certain kinds of sexism in the Chinese language that are more subtly embedded in the grammar in such a way that they often escape conscious attention. This article attempts to shed light on some of these phenomena, since it is often in these hidden patterns of linguistic usage that sexist assumptions and notions are most powerfully present.