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Language can be sexiest too and have the ability to empower a gender over the other.
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In our patriarchal society there is still evidence of inherent sexism in every aspect of life. This perspective essay concentrates on the sexism that is inherent in the English language. Although this ongoing debate may be considered by some as outdated, I disagree. In writing this essay I attempt to bring to the forefront an important issue and, I hope, to restart discussions. I do not assume the authority of summing up the whole debate, but rather would like to reintroduce ESL teachers to the subject and to sensitize them to covert assumptions and overt practices that seem to sustain sexism. As teachers and professionals we have the responsibility to continue learning and growing, to search for, develop, and offer our students our best teaching practices. We need to assess not only our students, but ourselves as well. Through observations of, and reflections on, our own teaching proce- dures, we may want to redefine our goals and practices to include nonsexist material, language, and literature. Numerous publications that deal with sexism and nonsexist teaching are available from departments of education and teachers' associations. To draw a connection between the work we do as ESL teachers and the problems women face in our society today can be a daunting task. Question- ing some of our views and values requires strength. However, it is an important aspect of our work as ESL teachers if we wish to give all our students the necessary tools to be whole, competent, and dynamic members
out that there is a good deal of feminist work emphasizing the importance of cultural representation of gender-men and women as they appear (or in the case of women don't appear) in stories, pictures, textbooks, scholarly ar- ticles, and so on-in forming the identities of real women and men, their notions of masculinity and femininity, their expectations of what is possible and their ideas of what is normal. (p. 5) I structure this essay around three themes: English as a part of culture, the discrimination in English, and the marginalization of women in literature. All of this has a profound effect on women in society and girls in schools. It is important for ESL teachers to be conscious of sexism in English (as this is
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the language we teach), to stop contributing to it, and in tum to use and support nonsexist language.
English as a Dominant Language: A Man-Made Language
tion of English as a second language has been correlated, and is related, to "nationalism, nationism, development, modernity, efficiency, western civilization, and many other culturally-loaded values, all of which are fea- tures of contemporary capitalism" (p. 85). This creates the inevitability that individuals who learn English as a second language will also learn the cultural and sociological ideologies inherent in this language. According to Phillipson, teaching English has three functions: First, part of the widespread legitimation for English is to qualify people
tion.... Secondly, English is also supposed to bring 'modem' ideas with it, to be a channel for interpersonal, social, and cultural values. It there-
tion, in that there is no choice other than to use the language in English classes. (pp. 68-69) As ESL teachers it is up to us to be aware of all these functions. Our students are not only learning a language as a tool to communicate with others, but they are also learning the cultural values that are embodied in the language.
hesitant and tentative-precisely because it is not only the language which determines the evaluation, but the sex" (p. 79). Because women's speech is not considered assertive, it is often assumed that they are lacking something. However, we must be aware that this does not mean that women do not speak well, it just means that they do not speak like men. ESL teachers need to be sensitive to this when we evaluate students' learning and progress. Spender (1980) goes even further to suggest that language actually con- structs our reality. We constant use symbols to make sense of the world in which we live, and language is a set of symbols, with inherent limitations, that we use to determine our reality. In this context it is nothing short of ludicrous to conceive of human beings as capable of grasping things as they really are, of being impar- tial recorders of the world. For they themselves, or some of them, at least, have created or constructed that world as they have reflected themselves within it. (p. 139)
want to organize our world any other way; moreover, "it has been the
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bias that always favors males. In English semantics, or in the meanings available in English, males not only have more words but they have more positive words. There is lithe existence of a semantic rule which determines
(and frequently sexual-which is also significant) connotations II (Spender,
the negative characteristics of humanity as men perceive them are projected onto women" (Cameron, 1992, p. 84). When talking about gender in the English language, one must look at the masculine-feminine dichotomy that arises in the vocabulary. Gender is determined by meaning, not form; therefore, in seemingly neutral terms a
tween two terms II (p. 83). Therefore, we need to consider gender connota- tions if we choose to include opposites in our lesson planning such as tough-weak and active-passive, because a lesser value is placed on the feminine as it is opposed to the masculine. Names such as Sir-Madam and bachelor-spinster that do denote male and female in their definitions are clear examples of the feminine taking negative or inferior connotations. "Gender seems to be a conceptual component in many unrelated lexical items; and that oppositions often function covertly as hierarchies, which means it may not be a neutral fact that this system represents women as the negative of men" (p. 87). Sexist language "cannot be regarded simply as the 'naming' of the world from one, masculinist perspective; it is better conceptualized as a multi- faceted phenomenon occurring in a number of quite complex systems of representation, all with their places in historical traditions II (Cameron, 1990,
values of men, what they find important (and what they do not), and these values are then handed down to each new generation. Through the use of sexist language women are effectively eliminated and
examples of a sexist linguistic structure because what they are effectively doing is excluding women, as women could never experience nor identify
purposes constitutes a sexist practice that has two major flaws: for one, the male terms are not experienced as truly generic. For the other, to use terms that have two quite different meanings is highly confused and confusing" (p. 28).
TESL CANADA JOURNAUREVUE TESL DU CANADA VOL. 17, NO.2, SPRING 2000
113
Male grammarians have handed down "Rule Number 21," which is the
based on no sound facts, has been used "to formulate a grammatical rule which would put the users of the language in the 'wrong' if they did not
singular as, for example, in the phrase "Anyone can play if they learn" has been determined to be quite common even though it is considered grammati- cally incorrect. As ESL teachers we need to be open to alternatives, to use them in our own teaching practices, and to relax rigid adherence to this rule in the name of grammatical correctness.
Women's Marginalization in Literature: Sex Objects and Beauties In literature, which is the written form of language, women are marginalized and relegated to positions to satisfy male fantasies. Women's real experi- ences are hidden and obscured behind a language that insists on their pas- sivity and silence. In many children's stories that are used to teach values, boys and girls receive two different messages. Boys, who will become men, learn that they are the doers, "that a great man risks all for intellectual daring, for progress and for the publlc good" (Wolf, 1991, p. 61), whereas young girls, who will
that their importance lies in how they look. Take, for example, the popular
that will wake her up is a kiss from the handsome prince. So she lies there waiting for him, looking beautiful, and is eventually saved by him. As a yOlL.lg girl grows up she realizes that not only must she look beauti- ful, but she must be sexy and desirable as well. And if she reads anything like
but about domination and the fulfillment of men's wants and needs, not her
1988). She analyzes selected passages from D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, and Norman Mailer "revealing the ways in which the authors, in fictional fantasy, exploit sexuality in order to aggrandize their aggressive phallic selves or to master and degrade women as submissive sexual objects" (p. 208).
Women's Herstory: ESL Students Need the Whole Story Adrienne Rich has said that women's "enforced ignorance has been a crucial key to their powerlessness" (Backhouse & Flaherty, 1992, p. 149). Women are ignorant of their past because their past stories have never had any impor- tance for men. In the education system women learn men's history: they read
(^114) MARGARET PIERCEY