Masculine Hegemony and Resistance in Chinese Language

As in other cultures, Chinese language is the living evidence of the long history of Chinese culture. Looking closely into its language usage, one will discover many hidden and explicit linguistic patterns that are pervaded with sexist assumptions and notions. In this paper, I will first examine (1) the morphology of Han characters, (2) Chinese vocabulary (occupational terms and forms of address), (3) the Chinese pronoun system, (4) Chinese word order, (5) Chinese four-character idioms and (6) Chinese proverbs in order to shed light on the sexist linguistic patterns that Chinese users cannot avoid. In the last part of the paper, I will explore the recent trends of modern Chinese language, with a focus on whether there is room for Chinese language to go against its sexist morphological and lexical structure and strive for gender neutrality.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License.

ISSN: 2202-2546

© Copyright 2015 La Trobe University. All rights reserved.

CRICOS Provider Code: VIC 00115M, NSW 02218K