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Gender discrimination in modern society
Sexism in the Japanese language
Sexism in the Japanese language
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Recommended: Gender discrimination in modern society
In contemporary Japanese, we have distinct difference in how each gender talk. This is constructed in the system of Japanese. Yet, people do not recognize the social differences among gender. This trait must have a historical reasoning behind systematic society. This research tries to study the gender difference in the contemporary Japanese, as well as the history of how the sexist language developed in the society.
I chose this topic because I was simply curious in how Japanese people talked. This research gave me an opportunity to examine how different I talk compared to male Japanese speakers. Also, as a prospective sociology major, it was interesting to see how gender influences our daily speech. Usually when talking about these topics, it also mentions about how women are inferior to men in a sense. As a feminist, I was interested in how the speech developed, and how it is being used.
In this study, I will first talk about the history of how these distinctive languages have developed. Then, I will examine the use of words in the contemporary Japanese language. This use of words will include the first person pronouns used in a speech, and also the sentence end particles. After the usage, I will use the experiment to conclude about the conversational dominance between male and female speaker. At the end, I would like to sum up with the explanation of why sexist languages still exist in Japan.
The history of Japanese women’s speech is fairly long. It started out in the Heian period. At first, the women’s speeches were limited to only few noble women who worked in the Shinto shrines. Abe expresses those speeches as imi-kotoba (pg. 653), or the taboo words. The term “imi” means something ominous. Therefore, this imi-kotob...
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... the long history of Japan. Also, Japanese people do not realize that they are unconsciously using a sexist language. The systematic society of Japan automatically creates the social norms. Japan still has fairly large gender difference compared to Western countries.
Works Cited
Itakura, Hiroko, and Amy B. M. Tsui. "Gender and Conversational Dominance in Japanese Conversation." Language in Society 33.2 (2004): 223-48. ProQuest. Web. 31 Mar. 2014.
Sakita, Tomoko I. "Sexism in Japanese English Education: A Survey of EFL Texts." Women and Language 18.2 (1995): 5-12. ProQuest. Web. 31 Mar. 2014.
Abe, Hideko Nornes. "From Stereotype to Context: The Study of Japanese Women's Speech." Feminist Studies 21.3 (1995): 647-71. ProQuest. Web. 31 Mar. 2014.
Peng, Fred C. C. Male/Female Differences in Japanese. Tokyo: East-West Sign Language Associiation, 1981. Print.
In the Article “marked women”, Deborah Tannen explains the social manner of judging women by their appearance or other factors, but not judging men for the same reasons. Tannen uses her observation during a conference meeting of four women and eight men to analyze how each woman in the meeting was marked while men were not. Again Deborah points out the issue of how one gender writing about the other is either portrayed as prejudiced or sexist.
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Sexism is the ideology that maintains that one sex is inherently inferior to the other. Sexism or discrimination based on gender has been a social issue for many years; it is the ideology that one sex is superior or inferior to the other. Sexism does not only affect females, but also males. Men are very often victimized by social stereotypes and norms based on gender expectations. Sexism has appears in almost all social institutions including family, the media, religion, sports, the military, politics, and the government. However, although both genders are affected, men have benefited from sexism the most (Thompson 300-301.)
his Essay will analyse, introduce, and discuss the terms Hegemonic Masculinity and Emphasized femininity, if it still applies in modern times and the use of these concepts to comprehend the role of the man and female in Eastern Asia, in relation to post-war Japan. In order to present a clear and linear argument I will divide this essay into three parts: In the first part I will define the term hegemonic masculinity, the common traits and the influence that it has in society; the essay will continue then in explaining and outlining the term emphasized femininity. The second part will analyse the impact of the notions of hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity in relation to post war Japan has. The last part will briefly identify some
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The ideology that one sex is superior to the other is called sexism. The presumption of male sexism led to patterns of prejudice and discrimination against women. These prejudices and discriminations have led to many beliefs or ideas of why women are inferior to men. They range from brain size to sexual differences, including personalities based on genitalia. Cross-cultural studies demonstrate how the socialization process and societal expectations of men and women produce variances in sex-role norms and behavior.
In her essay titled “It Begins at the Beginning”, professor of linguistics Deborah Tannen describes how girls’ and boys’ communication and language patterns differ from an early age. Tannen’s essay, which is adapted from her book titled You Just Don’t Understand, she states that in the world of communication boys and girls have vast differences, which makes itself apparent in the way that they play. The author backs this up with two explanations. First, is that people not only talk to boys and girls differently, but also accept different ways of talking from them. Second, children learn communication not only from their parents but also from their peers, and there are major differences in the way boys and girls play together and speak to each other.
Deborah Tannen is a linguistics professor at Georgetown University, and her research specialty is conversational style. Based on her observations, she states, “for males, conversation is the way you negotiate your status in the group and keep people from pushing you around; you use talk to preserve your independence. Females, on the other hand, use conversation to negotiate closeness and intimacy; talk is the essenc...
There have been several discussions that address the differences between male and female language use. These discussions all began with Lakoff’s controversial essays from 1975 that first introduced the concept of “women’s language.” (O’Barr et al 1980) Since Lakoff’s essays, other linguists have sought to address the issue of how gender affects language. O’Barr and Atkins use Lakoff’s information ab...
Littlejohn, S.W., & Foss, K. A. (2009). Genderlect Theory. Encyclopedia of Communication Theory (1st ed., Vol.25, pp. 205-207). Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.
Wardhaugh states different social norms defining the standards of being men or women, which has a profound influence on the language behavior shown by different genders. In other words, both men and women should possess the ability to show either masculinity or feminity through the language they use. When this ability overlaps with the other gender, however, one might be considered as as outsider of their own gender. He then lists the main differences between males and femals with the connection with language: genetic differences, social differences (e.g. various roles people take within a certain society), and linguistic differences (e.g. speech style and word choice). Doing so, he gives readers an indepth idea about how gender differences link to various language behaviors. He further explains how these differences are possibly created and constructed in society. Wardhaugh also examines a few common gender stereotypes, such as women talk more than men, and proves most of the stereotypes are wrong.
...terpretation of language. “Women and men sometimes perceive the same messages to have different meanings” (Torppa). Everybody has seen the affects of this difference in interpretation in society. It is the reason why there are more women at Celine Dion Concerts, and why there are more men attend heavy metal concerts.
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