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Eight words that reveal the sexism at the heart of the English language
As Oxford Dictionaries comes under fire for sexist definitions, the history of terms that refer to women shows how deep negative attitudes go
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I am a gentil womman and no wenche: from Geoffrey Chaucers The Merchants Tale, c1386. Photograph: Alamy
Linguists call it collocation: the likelihood of two words occurring together. If I say pop, your mental rolodex will begin whirring away, coming up with candidates for what might follow. Music, song or star, are highly likely. Sensation or diva a little less so. Snorkel very unlikely indeed.
What do you think of when I say the word rabid? One option, according to the dictionary publisher Oxford Dictionaries, is feminist. The publisher has been criticised for a sexist bias in its illustrations of how certain words are used. Nagging is followed by wife. Grating and shrill appear in sentences describing womens voices, not mens.
One of the points of Oxford Dictionaries, part of Oxford University Press (OUP), is to show how words are used in the real world. And that is their response to allegations of sexism. The example sentences we use are taken from a huge variety of different sources and do not represent the views or opinions of Oxford University Press, they said in a statement. In other words, its not the dictionary thats sexist, its the English-speaking world. Why choose feminist over, say, rightwinger, communist or fan, though? As if not quite convinced by its own explanation, the OUP is now reviewing the example sentence for rabid to ensure that it reflects current usage.
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Language, as the medium through which we conduct almost all relationships, public and private, bears the precise imprint of our cultural attitudes. The history of language, then, is like a fossil record of how those attitudes have evolved, or how stubbornly they have stayed the same.
When it comes to women, the message is a depressing one. The denigration of half of the population has embedded itself in the language in ways you may not even be aware of. Often this takes the form of pejoration: when the meaning of the word gets worse over time. Linguists have long observed that words referring to women undergo this process more often than those referring to men. Here are eight examples:
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These eight words show how social conditions leave their mark on the language. The process of pejoration may take place below the level of consciousness, but in historical perspective, the direction of travel is obvious. Have the achievements of the feminist movement percolated down through the many layers of our language? The Oxford Dictionaries controversy suggests not. Can the words we use to describe women avoid the fate of hussy, mistress and courtesan? Theres hope, but only time will tell.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/27/eight-words-sexism-heart-english-language