【正文】 at it reveals sexism in language. The hypothesis is that in arranging word order, people are often following a “good–bad” sequence, such as good–bad, rich–poor, pretty–ugly, and life–death. This is obviously true in language, and has been expanded by scholars to the word order of man–woman. Such a word order in arranging the two sexes is said to imply the interpretation of man’s superiority to woman. Examples boom in English newspapers, magazines and people’s daily talks, such as male and female, husband and wife, son and daughter, king and queen, brother and sister, Adam and Eve, Mr. and Mrs.Particular cases in this topic exist such as we do not say “gentlemen and ladies” but reverse them. It is deemed that it is influenced by the notion of chivalry that men should protect women, which leads to the later tradition “l(fā)ady first”. People neither say “bridegroom and bride” because marriage to a woman is of more importance mon minds. And ironically, such interpretation of the two particular cases again leads to the interpretation of the thought that women are weaker than men so that they should be protected, and women are born to be affiliated to men because only when it es to marriage they bee important. Semantic perspective We can see obviously that sexism exists in semantic perspective. Semantic changes have plicated cultural and psychological contributing factors. The following parts will analyses this phenomenon from: (1) proverb。 (2) generalization of masculine。 (3) semantic degradation. ProverbAs an important ponent of language, proverbs mirror geography, history, social system and social ideas of a certain nation. By examining English proverbs, we can discover the deeprooted sexism ideology in society. Take the proverb below as an example. Maids want nothing but husband, and when they have them, they want everything. (Xu Zhisuo, 2000)In this proverb, women are described as greedy people who are never satisfied with what they own. In the past, women are thought as having no wisdom or ideas. People also thought women are stupid and ignorant. The following proverbs are typical examples.A woman’s advice is never to seek.When an ass climbs a ladder, we may find wisdom in women.Women in state affairs are like monkeys in glass shops.In some other examples, women are even described evilminded, which gives us the impression that women are not to be worth a hair.Women are the devil’s nets.Nothing agrees worse than a lady’s heart and beggar’s purse.No devil is so bad as she devil. Generalization of masculineThe generic masculine terms refer to those words which basically refer only tomale but are used for an overall referring in the situation that the sex of the referent isnot known or is unnecessary to be distinguished. This applies to ‘man’, either alone orin pounds, as in the following examples: 1. All men are created equal.2. The university’s fourman crews won in both the men’s and women’s divisions.3. The Ramp。D department of that Top 500 is manned by a fully petent team of scientists and researchers.4. This discovery will benefit all mankind.And it also applies to the pronoun ‘he’, which traditional grammars prescribe incontexts like ‘Everybody in the class should make up his mind’, where it is not knownand it does not matter whether any particular student in this class is female or male:f. He who laughs last laughs best.g. If a person breaks the law, he will be punished. (Wang Fuzhen,1995:287)h. An important factor for one to be accepted to the second round interview isthat he must express himself clearly and confidently in front of the interviewer.An American Linguist named Nilson gives us a quite typical example in his book Sexism and Language to show the universality of sexism in English language. Let me show you the restrictions that would be placed on my daughter…Among the peculiar restrictions placed on her would be that could never really participate in the brotherhood of mankind. And regardless of what her forefathers were, she couldn’t have been born an Irishman, a Frenchman, or a Dutchman...At school she would have to learn early that she could serve on mittees but never be the spokesman or chairman. She could participate in sports, but she could not practice sportsmanship. In baseball she could be a pitcher or a catcher but not the ballboy or the first baseman…Even if she rose to real power in the world and became a queen, she couldn’t rule because there are only kingdoms—no queendoms…But if by some happenstance, she did succeed in gaining power in government, the real tragedy is that she could never be a statesman—only a politician. (quote Chen Mingjuan, 1997:82) Semantic DegradationAnother reflection of sexism in English is made by the fact that female words are easy to carry derogatory, immoral and sexual connotations in sex paired words to indicate their lower status. Lexicographers have noted that once a word or term bees associated with women, it often acquires semantic characteristics that are congruent with social stereotypes and evaluations of women as a group (Smith, 1985). In English, there are many counterparts referring to male and female respectively. Originally, they are of the same meaning. With semantic change, many female words have derogated depreciative terms, or even related to “sex”. Let’s have some examples to understand more clearly.1. Call boy and Call girl Word collocations often also expose the degradation of female words’ meanings, setting call boy and call girl for example. In terms of word form, call boy and call girl is a parallel pair. Yet semantically, a call boy is someone who takes the job of calling the actors and actresses to stage in a theater, but a call girl is a prostitute who is summoned by a telephone call.2. Master and MistressOriginated from Latin, this pair of words both connoted the meaning of ‘great’, indicating powerful and significant man and