How Language Affects Culture And Woman

Gender derives its formative meaning from culture and societal values, it is not a universal entity as there are various cultures, societal values, beliefs, and preferred ways of organizing collective life across the globe and even within a single culture the meaning of gender varies over time. Chapters three and four of Gendered Lives by Julia T. Wood helps to insightfully look at those views, and rhetorical movements (women and men’s movements) that have overtime influenced, defined and given various meanings to gender (masculinity and femininity).

There are more women actively working in equal positions as men. Now a days, there is a more open view that women should be treated as equals. Although the idea has changed drastically from a time period when women were only expected to be housewives, the tradition of using male based language has not changed. The language is not aligned with society. Some feminist groups may argue that people are too close-minded to recognize equality for women in writing. Some linguists may say that it is both grammatically and realistically hard to replace all the masculine pronouns with a new pronoun like “his’er” or phrases like “his or her”. Others just do not care about going through the risk of rewriting every single piece of literature in the world. As Fadiman quotes in her essay, “Either they want to change everything, or they don’t see what all the fuss is about”, people can either completely ban the idea of using masculine pronouns to represent humankind or keep the same tradition although the time has changed

    In reading this excerpt I discovered many commonly used words I typically overlook as standard, or insignificant, to carry power and social weight . Richardson discusses the idea "woman is always part of man" in the literal linguistic sense, but also allegorically. She writes, historically women have been forced to live under a masculine framework of language with respect to specific occupations one may hold. Fireman, policeman, and mail man are words requiring neutralization, in Richardson's opinion, for gender equality to prevail. Furthermore, Richardson posits doing so will enable children, specifically young girls, to be open-minded regarding the jobs they are capable of doing. I believe it is critically

Most questions of whether and how language shapes thought start with the simple observation that languages differ from one another. And a lot! Just look at the way people talk, they might say. Certainly, speakers of different languages must attend to strikingly different aspects of the world just so they can use their language properly.

Another interesting statement I would like to bring to the surface is Alvarez writes in her book that “boys are born men but girls turn into women” (72). This made me think of the BBC YouTube clip we watched in class. Within this video a mother, father, and daughter are getting prepared for their daughters sweet fifteen. One of the first things I recognized in this film was that the father a male was speaking about and for the females when they were in the same room as them listening to what he had to say. This is a problem in itself as the male voices his and silences the women, in addition, he is speaking on a subject that he does not even fully understand, women. For arguments sake a women would never speak about a man and what it means to be one. This power dynamic within this family is troubling and shows the dominance of one gender over

‘Women produce children; women are mothers and wives; women do the cooking, cleaning, sewing and washing; they take care of men and are subordinate to male authority; they are largely excluded from high-status occupations and from positions of power.’ (Haralambous and Holborn 1995, Sociology Themes and Perspectives, HarperCollins Publishers) These stereotypes have come from our past and have now become quite frequently used in today’s society. Women have been seen as the maintainers of the household while the men go out to work and earn a living. “When our ancient ancestors switched to hunting as a way of life, the relationship between males and females was dramatically

Male dominance a subject that is a huge topic of debate. Societies have accepted male dominance because it has been tradition for culture. For my Hispanic culture it has been seen as a trait of my culture that a wife would be beaten by their husband. Women throughout history is have not been treated equal to men. Male dominance is a topic of huge debate. Societies have seen the unjust of male dominance and hear the stories of female abuse by males. Women were suppressed by males in many ways. Women were seen as just a symbol of a caretaker and a mother. Recently women are being more independent and gaining high position jobs but in male dominated jobs. A recent issue of debate is the wage gap of females and males. Also another topic of dominance

When thinking of gender roles in society, stereotypes generally come to mind. Throughout history these stereotypes have only proven to be true. Major historical events have had a huge impact on the way men and women are seen and treated. In this way, women have always been secondary to males and seen as the fragile counterparts whose job is to take care of the household and most importantly, be loyal to her husband no matter the circumstance. Gender roles throughout history have greatly influenced society. The slow progress of woman’s rights throughout humanities led to an explosion of woman’s rights throughout the 20th century and that trend will only continue on into the rest of the 21st century.

For most of this society’s history males have been known as the strong and often more powerful sex. For example, in Are Men More Likely Than Women To Become Heroes and Villains?, Alison and Goethals write that, according to Roy Baumeister, psychologist, people from varying civilizations have considered males to be disposable (Alison and Goethals 1). By disposable, they mean that men are often pressured to be the ones to give up their lives instead of women in dangerous situations. Also, from the beginning, males have often been thought of as the dominant and more heroic gender.

The article by Sally Raskoff states the current situation of gender and power in society. She states that we currently live in a male dominated society and hence our actions and languages reflect that. Examples of curse words are given to show how they refer to women negatively. This is happening because of male masculinity. According to Sally Raskoff, Males want to be seen as assertive, aggressive, and strong. And in order to show they are those things, they insult other males by referring to them as inferior things, body parts of women they consider to be “dirty”. One way to combat male masculinity is by emphasizing femininity, which is about encouraging women to be more nurturing, caring, mothering, and passive.

However, men by large have control in government positions, in public affairs, and in the majority of the private sector leadership positions. In addition, men are still seen as the breadwinners while women stay at home and take care of the family. Johnson also talked about women still seen as weak or sexual objects that need protecting, while men are masculine, strong, and heterosexual normative. Culture is in such a way that men don’t notice their own privilege in society.

In many circles of the world, various groups of people distinguish themselves from one another through religion, language, culture, and sometimes gender. People also develop stereotypes about a particular group of people in order to identify them. However, most of the time, these stereotypes hold true for only some members of a group. Sometimes, these stereotypes are just plain misconceptions that do not even apply to the group it claims to. Stereotypes are placed on people because it is a way to easily identify what type of person or ethnicity an individual is. At one point in time, these stereotypes may have been true; however, in today’s modern society, most of these stereotypes are outdated and false, which leads them to turn into

This is seen in two ways; the first is interpersonal interactions, and the second is representations of men and women in that are embedded in form and content of language. For example Cameron (1992) found that women are referred to by their first name as well as terms of endearment such as ‘love’ and ‘dear’. It shows that language and representations are closely linked and that language holds representation of ideas in clichés, epithets etc. It has also been represented that a women’s experience is systematically devalued in comparison to that of the male norm. Weitz (2003) has highlighted that throughout history women’s bodies have centrally affected the structures within which women live. Females are described as passive, for example Mother Nature. Objects such as cars and boats are mostly deemed female and temperamental and are also dominated by males. English language reflects the power that men have historically held in many areas of life. The sexist language against women shows them in lower social and economic status. An example of this is nouns ending in ‘ess’ e.g. waitress, stewardess, these are then seen as less significant than their male equivalents. This also applies to the suffix ‘ette’ this is giving feminine status to objects such as cigarette, this shows inferiority. Some studies have shown that individuals who do not believe in traditional sex stereotypical roles are less likely to write an educational essay using sexist language (McMinn, Lindsay,

Language is the universal connection that brings all humans together. We share this common ground to communicate. The three major points that I would like to focus on are: How does language influence our culture? Does it define us, or does it refine us? And lastly, the impact that language has on our societies.

Before examining particular societies, the general notions of patriarchy must be established. Generally, women were considered inferior to men, but each facet of society provides a distinctive insight into gender roles. A fundamental difference between the two genders was that the responsibility of a man was to be a member of the public, whereas the responsibility of a woman was to be in the home. Social norms defined men as “rulers, warriors, scholars, and heads of households” (Ways of the World 59). Even if a man had little