【正文】 xism Caused by Psychology Because of the social and cultural factors, women are always considered to be the weak. People treat women as inferior to men. They educate men to be manly, decisive, and brave while women are required to be polite, conservative, obedient, and gentle. Because women are in subordinate status in the society, they have to constrain their emotion and give up their own need to meet the satisfaction of men. As time passes, women pay more attention to the elegance and standard of language than men when speaking. They use more pleasant and polite words in the hope that they can receive other’s approval. And they are taught to speak softly, to avoid contradicting others, to be obedient in munication, and to be aware of giving cues of strong confidence. They mould themselves to be inferior in their potential sub Therefore, women try their best to strengthen their social status through their speech than men do. The lower the women’s position is, the more polite they are. And the standard language they use can show their submission and politeness. D. Sexism Caused by Culture 1. Social conceptions There are different customs and conceptions in different counties. But discrimination against women is mon in the world. Since childhood, social conceptions began to stipulate females’ DOS and DONT’S. For instance, parents will stop a crying boy immediately and ask him not to cry anymore in the future. Because in their minds, men will be laughed at if they cry. Contrarily, people sympathy females if they cry. In a word, social conceptions model men to be strong but women to be weak since childhood. Another example is that boys could be mischievous while girls must be gentle and quiet. Girls must stay at home and act as a fair maiden. Even worse, girls always play with dolls, while boys play with mechanical models. In a word, social conceptions form males’ strong temperament and females’ feeble temperament since they were born. Females ar e being forced to retain their inferior and obedient status in society. They have to submit to men and sacrifice themselves to men to help them succeed. “A woman must regard her husband as her king and serve him with her highest adoration. Submitting is the most important and persistent obligation of a woman.” 6 How low the status of women in family and society it is! Under this kind of custom in the menoriented society, how can women avoid being discriminated? 2. Literature and art Along with the development of civilization, literature and art play an important role in discrimination against women. “In literature and art, men’s characteristics are, full of aspiration, mighty and helpful, daring to take risks, decisive, indomitable, etc. While women are being regarded as weak, temperate, timid, passive and so on. It is easy to notice sex discrimination in the works of literature and art because sex discrimination is one of the most mon topics of literature and art.” 7 We can easily find out discrimination from literature and art because they are the mon medium. Literature and art model many meaningful discriminative images by the mon values, and conversely these images strengthen people’s social values. With the strength of literature and art, how can we avoid discrimination in society and language? Ⅲ. The Forms of Sexism in English Vocabulary A. Sexism in Morphology The famous linguist J﹒ Grenberg advanced the theory of Marked and Unmarked. This “Marked Theory” reflects sexism in English vocabulary. G enerally speaking, masculine language is usually unmarked while feminine words are marked. In other words, masculine words are generic and mon。 mankind. There are some examples taken from the dictionary. (1)All men must die. (2)Growing old is something a man has to accept. (3)Man is mortal. From these definitions and examples, it is easy to see “man” and “men”, which can be used generically to refer to both male and female. But “woman” and “women” cannot be employed in reference to men. This also reminds people of the famous saying from the US Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal.” Should people argue that the “men” does not include women because women were not given the right to vote in the eighteenth century America? A clear explanation of this phenomenon may be found in sentence like: (1) Man is a social animal. (2) Men remake nature. When seeing the two sentences, speakers of English are able to readily interpret “man” and “men” as meaning “the human race”。s names usually use the words meaning beautiful, graceful, and lovely. For example, Lily is the name of a kind of flower: Susan es from the Hebrew language and means graceful and kind。 Andrew originates from Greek with the meaning of courageous and frank。s what she does”. 4. Sexism in Synonyms for Prostitute and Pimp The synonyms for prostitute are slut, call girl, cocotte, floozy, harlot, queen, strumpet, trollop, girlie, joy girl, lady of pleasure, wanton, professional, a woman of the street, street walker, go/live on the street, fancy woman, and so on, while for pimp, only whoremonger. Astoundingly, there are far more synonyms for prostitute than for pimp. Crystal and Schulz’s sources list more than 500 English slang terms for “prostitute”, but only 65 for “whoremonger”. The above phenomenon indicates greater tolerance towards men in the matter of sexual liberties, while intolerance towards women. Ⅳ. The Strategies of Eliminating or Avoiding Sexism in English In English language, people can find universal phenomena of sexism, but with the vigorous developing of women’s liberation movement and the improving of women’s status, the sexism in English language have desalinated. Two ways are used to eliminate the sexist English, they are: language strategies and socia