University of Babylon College of Education for Human Sciences Department of English/ PhD Programme

The Prevalence of

Masculine Expressions in English

A term paper Submitted in partial fulfillment for the requirements of a PhD course in General Linguistics

by Ahmed Sahib Jabir

Jan, 2013
0

1. Introduction
The generic use of masculine gender is a universal phenomenon that can be traced back in many languages. Pauwels (1998) work proves that the linguistic sexism1 is an international phenomenon. Despite the differences between languages, Pauwels (ibid) presents a number of common elements in the linguistic representation of women and men across several languages (see also Newman et al. 2008): a. the man is portrayed as the norm for all human beings; b. the womans linguistic invisibility, or, when she is visible, her asymmetry in comparison to man is evident; and c. some terms denoting women depend on terms denoting men2. As for the English language, its history is stuffed full of masculine terms used in reference not just to men, but to human beings in general, or to persons of unspecified gender (Newman, 1996: 353). Earp (2012) mentions some of these cases through the examples mentioned below: From the New Testament Jesus rebuked his tempter with: (1) Man does not live on bread alone.
1

The term 'sexism' was invented in the 1960s to refer to discrimination within a social system on the basis of sexual membership: male and female. The relationship between these two categories is not an equal or egalitarian one but hierarchical, where the category 'male' is the norm and the category 'female' represents the 'other' and the 'abnormal', that is the 'marked version' (Wodak, 1997: 7). Some examples are: prince/ princess; god/ goddess; author/ authoress; mayor/ mayoress; host/ hostess; steward/ stewardess; poet/ poetess; usher/ usherette; sailor/ sailoretteetc.

From Hamlets existential musings we get: (2) What a piece of work is a man! The USA founding fathers held as self-evident that: (3) All men are created equal. And Neil Armstrong famously uttered his remark via live broadcast from the moon: (4) One small step for man; one giant leap for mankind. The use of he in English to refer to a person of unknown gender has been prescribed by usage manuals of traditional grammarians, style books, and school textbooks from the early eighteenth century, an early example of which is Anne Fisher's (1745) grammar book A New Grammar. OConnor and Kellerman (2009) cite the following examples from Fisher's (1745) grammar: (5) The customer brought his purchases to the cashier for checkout. (6) In a supermarket, anyone can buy anything he needs. (7) When a customer argues, always agree with him. This may also be compared to the usage of the word man to humans in general as the examples (1-4) mentioned above

2. The use of pronouns

The idea that he, him and his should go both ways (with masculine and feminine) caught on and was widely adopted. Nonetheless, this generic masculine use is being eliminated, usually 2

by recasting the sentences with plural forms. Newman (1996: 367) believes that in modern colloquial speech, sometimes they is used even when the gender of the subject is obvious; they implies a generic (or representative of type class) rather than individuated interpretation. Singular nouns (e.g. someone) are followed by plural pronouns (they instead of he), so that the pronouns actually disagree in number with their antecedents. This solecism, which feminist language reformers have lately sought to legitimize, is common enough in casual speech (Stek, 2005). Opposing this view of legitimizing the use of they, Quirk and Greenbaum (1974: 7.30) state that he is to be used as an unmarked form to refer to anybody or everybody, male or female since the use of they in this context is frowned upon in formal English and that it should only be used in informal situations. A point is to be mentioned here that might be quite surprising. The use of they as a generic pronoun is not recent as the above discussion may falsely indicate: for centuries it was used by writers as far back as Chaucer who used it for singular and plural, masculine and feminine. Nobody seemed to mind that they, them and their were officially plural so they should not be used with singular nouns (OConnor and Kellerman, 2009). As Merriam-Websters Dictionary of English Usage (2012) explains, writers were comfortable using they with an indefinite pronoun like everybody because it suggested a sexless plural. Paradoxically, if any single person is responsible for the masculine generic usage of he, it is (as mentioned above) the female 3

grammarian,

Anne

Fisher,

an

eighteenth

century

British

schoolmistress and the first woman to write an English grammar book. That book ran to more than thirty editions, making it one of the most successful grammars of its time (OConnor and Kellerman, 2009). Feminists, however, are proponents of using gender-

inclusive language, such as humanity3, he or she, him or her instead of mankind, he, and him respectively. Feminists are also proponents of using non-sexist language, using Ms. to refer to both married and unmarried women, for example, or the ironic use of the term herstory4 instead of history... and the like (Wikipedia). Recently, nevertheless, the struggle of the feminist reform movement is gaining triumph in various aspects of life and one of the most important aspects is language. There is evidence for the successful adoption of feminist linguistic alternatives to genderbiased occupational nouns. It was shown that there is substantial evidence, especially in English language communities of the adoption and use of non-sexist occupational nouns, titles and terms (Pauwels, 2012). Finally and as a personal remark, I dare say that The Feminist Reform Movements5 has fully succeeded as far as language is concerned not only to impose , as it were, non- sexist forms but we can notice that a large number of books published during the last ten

Ironically, women cannot get rid of man since the suggested alternative to mankind is no more than humanity, a noun which is derived from human! 4 The term herstory is coined to replace his with her. Interestingly enough, it also denotes her story i. e. the story of womens suffering from sexist language! 5 For information about these movements visit: http://www.writework.com/essay/feminist-reformmovements-19th-century-insert-more-transit

years use the pronouns she, her, and herself generically! This is what I have personally observed when consulting references in my PhD courses this year. 3. Other Masculine Expressions Masculinity does not show up only in pronouns. In many other words, masculine forms are frequently employed. For instance, job titles ending in man dating from a time when only males performed the jobs described are still in use. Nowadays, however, men and women are equally employed in different jobs so such titles need modifications (Newman et al. 2008). Examples of such titles with the suggested non-sexist counterparts are listed below: Masculine form Businessman/ Businessmen Chairman Congressman Fireman Foreman Manmade Policeman Repairman Salesman Spokesman Watchman Workmen Non-sexist form Business person / Business people Chairperson Member of Congress Fire fighter Supervisor Handmade Police officer Repairer Sales agent or sales associate Spokesperson Guard Workers.

Pauwels (1998: 34) mentions that the stereotypical linguistic representation of both sexes suggests that women are primarily depicted as sexual creatures whereas men are portrayed as rational beings. Moreover, bad features are attributed to females (e. g. He cries like a girl!) while good features are ascribed to males (She sounds like Mozart!). In recent years, nonetheless, such practice is generally avoided. Some English words, especially the name of some professions, are basically of common gender, namely, they can be applied to both sexes. However, people habitually associate them only with male6. Consequently, we have to add woman before those names if we want to refer to female of those professions (Lei, 2006: 88). For example: Common gender Doctor Professor Engineer Lawyer Reporter Female woman doctor woman professor woman engineer lady lawyer girl reporter

Cameron (1994:29), on the other hand, points out that it is not only words that matter: more significant is that meaning (which she calls the real problem) may not correlate with the linguistic form. She believes that sexism in language exists below the surface, so that superficial reforms (like proscribing some finite set of offensive forms or making all texts formally gender neutral) are insufficient to
6

Consider this example: (A) I want to see the doctor. (B) She will be here in a second. (A) No, I said I want to see the DOCTOR! Clearly, A takes the word doctor to denote a male doctor only.

fight it. Many instances of sexism are manifested not in single words or specific constructions but through an accumulation of discursive or textual choice.

4. Conclusions
From the very brief account given above concerning the use of gender in English, the following conclusions can be arrived at: 1. Gender bias towards masculine forms is universal. 2. Gender in English has passed through different stages of modifications, adaptation, and change. 3. The pronoun systems in particular has gone through various stages regarding the choice of the generic pronoun: a) They was first used for the singular male and female although it violated number agreement; b) He and him were then used as a more formal option adhering to the grammatically important point of agreement despite their obvious bias to males. c) The phrases he or she, him or her were used as a compromise solution so that language users abide by both gender and number agreements though they have frequently been described as awkward. d) Recently, however, it seems that she and her are regularly used generically to satisfy the demands of the feminist movement! 4. Previously, English manifested gender bias towards masculine expressions but presently there is more tendency toward replacing masculine expressions by non-sexist ones.

References
Cameron, Deborah. 1994. Problems of sexist and non-sexist language. In Exploring Gender: Questions and Implications for English Language Education, Jane Sunderland (ed), 2633. Hemel Hempstead: Earp B. (2012) The extension of masculine generics. Journal for Communication and Culture, Vol. 2 Issue 1. Retrieved on 3rd, Dec. 2012 http://www.thepassivevoice.com/07/2012/theextinction-of-masculine-generics/ Lei, X. (2006) Sexism in language Journal of Language and Linguistics. Vol. 5 No. 1. pp 87-94. Newman M. (1996) "What can pronouns tell us? A case study of English epicenes pronouns", Studies in language 22:2, 353 389. Newman, M., C. Groom, L. Handelman, and J. Pennebaker (2008) Gender Differences in Language Use: An Analysis of 14,000 Text Samples Discourse Processes, 45: PP211236. O'Conner P. and S. Kellerman (2009). "All-Purpose Pronoun". The New York Times Retrieved on 18th Dec. 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26FOBonlanguage-t.html?_r=0 Pauwels, A. (1998) Women changing the Language. London: Longman,

---------------- (2012) Feminist Language Planning: Has it been worthwhile? Retrieved on 6th Dec. 2012 http://www.linguistik-online.de/heft1_99/pauwels.htm

Quirk, R. and S. Greenbaum (1974) A University Grammar of English. London: Longman.

Stek J. (2005) Todays New International Version. Retrieved on 22th Nov. 2012, http://www.bibleresearcher.com/tniv.html#nota3 Wodak, R. (1997) Gender and Discourse. London: SAGE publications www.en.wikipedia.org www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/book.pl?usage.htm#