An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

3.8 Sexism
Some of the most important linguistic changes affecting English since the 1960s
have arisen from the ways society has come to look differently at the practices
and consequences of sexism … There is now a widespread awareness, which was
lack ing a generation ago, of the ways in which language covertly displays social
attitudes towards men and women. The criticisms have been mainly directed at
the biases built into English vocabulary and grammar which reflect a traditionally
male-orientated view of the world and which have been interpreted as reinforcing
the low status of women in society. All the main European languages have been
affected, but English more than most, because of the early impact of the feminist
movement in the USA.
(Crystal 1995: 368)
Bringing sexism in language into consciousness, at least among the educated, has not
been difficult. No doubt Crystal is correct in suggesting that the feminist movement
has spearheaded this development. The effect has been to encourage change by indi -
viduals who are sensitive to the issue and by organisations which wish to promote an
ethical stance (or unkindly avoid litigation for sexual harassment). Implementing
change, however, has not been easy. 
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In vocabulary, words of masculine gender which are commonly used to refer to
people, both male and female, have been targeted. Thus, ‘chairman’ becomes ‘chair -
person’ or ‘chair’ and ‘policeman’ ‘police officer’. Marital status for men is not marked
linguistically: ‘Mr’ being neutral as to whether married or not. The introduction of
‘Ms’ for women (with some success) attempts to equalise in terms of address. Special
vocabulary for women in professions where there is no need for gender distinctions
is now disfavoured: thus ‘actor’ not ‘actress’, ‘waiter’ not ‘waitress’. It is frequently
pointed out that sexism is implicit in the unmarked status of the male form whereby
morphological processes take that form as the base and add affixes (‘-ess’, ‘-ette’,
‘-ine’) to signal female. What is not in question is that languages typically contain far
more terms to describe women than men, usually derogatorily, and that even when
they are not at first derogatory they tend over time to acquire negative connotations
(e.g. harlot, tart).
In grammar the focus of change has been on the third-person singular pronoun
in English, which is always marked for gender. Holmes points out that
[E]xperiments exploring people’s perceptions report that ‘man’ and ‘he’ are con -
sistently interpreted as referring to males, despite generic contexts. The problem
arises when a pronoun is needed in combination with a sex-neutral noun (such as
‘patient’) or an indefinite pronoun (such as ‘anybody’). Alternative solutions are
to use a hybrid (e.g. ‘he/she’) or the plural (‘their’). Thus the following solutions
are among those found: all have their critics:
1. If a patient needs attention urgently, he should ring his bell.
2. If a patient needs attention urgently, he/she should ring his/her bell.
3. If a patient needs attention urgently, he or she should ring his or her bell.
4. If a patient needs attention urgently, they should ring their bell.
5. If patients need attention urgently, they should ring their bell.
(Holmes 1991: 214)
The long history of attempts to establish an epicene pronoun in English is well
documented by Baron (1981) and there is some suggestion that preferred usage now
is for ‘they’ as an alternative generic pronoun. 
Discourse patterns also have been subject to scrutiny, with attention given to such
inequalities as order of mention (‘boys and girls’, ‘man and wife’, ‘I now pronounce
you man and wife’, ‘Lords and Ladies’, though ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ is ignored as
somehow slipping through the sexist net) and value of mention (e.g. ‘the bomb was
responsible for the deaths of seven people including one man’). Changes to existing
texts are less common and no one seriously attempts to rebowdlerise Shakespeare.
But those texts that claim a universal appeal, such as the Bible, the Prayer Book, have
been carefully edited so as to offer a more inclusive language of mention and address
(Doody 1980). We might speculate that such changes are in the direct line of the
increasing vernacularisation of religious texts on the grounds that just as the early
translations into German, English and so on were attempts to make congregations
feel that they owned those texts in ways that they could not when they were only in
Latin or Greek, so the further inclusivising takes account of the reality of many
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congregations which are (in Christian churches) largely made up of women, who
find themselves excluded by the traditional male-dominated language of the Bible. 
Change, however incomplete, there certainly has been, and it has been remarkably
quick. It has affected writing far more than speaking and in the written language it
is likely to be permanent since publishing companies and other normative bodies
now often insist on the avoidance of sexist language.
It may be that changes in English are easier than in languages (such as French)
where there is greater morphological marking of grammatical gender. Even so, it
is the case that in often very different ways all languages exhibit sexist language
and the thrust of this language in gender movement has been to encourage first
consciousness-raising and change where that is possible.
To what extent are applied linguists (rather than linguists) involved in these inter -
ventions? The answer is a great deal, first of all through participation in proposing
and encouraging and explaining the changes (e.g. Cooper 1982; Holmes 1991;
Cameron 1985), and second through offering a radical critique. 
After all, what the applied linguist is able to do is to bring into consideration
about language problems not only the linguistic view, or the feminist view but other
views too, including what effect change may or may not have and to what extent
change will be acceptable. The linguist’s single-minded interest in language change
and the effect that has on the internal structure of language means that he/she is
more likely to assume that deliberate change, especially when it appears so desirable,
will be effective and will change the structure permanently. The applied linguist on
the other hand is more likely to be sceptical and to acknowledge that deliberate
change has never been easy to bring about and that in any case even if the language
changes, that does not necessarily change the power inequalities, which is the main
thrust of the movement to rid language of its linguistic sexism.
A helpful guide to recent development can be found in Susan Ehrlich (2004). She
stresses the ‘importance of considering communicative settings and tasks as possible
determinants of linguistic behaviour that has more typically, and perhaps too
simplistically, been treated as the effect of speaker’s gender’ (Ehrlich 2004: 307). She
quotes Cameron: ‘Sociolinguistics says that how you act depends on who you are:
critical theory says that who you are (and taken to be) depends on how you act’
(Cameron 1995: 15–16).
A more recent treatment by Cameron can be found in Cameron 2005. The
interaction between action and identity takes us back to Joseph’s discussion (quoted
in Chapter 2) of language and identity.