Ideology and Language: Sexism in Language

Language reflects the social powers that one group has held in many areas of life. Wherever there is a power relationship or inequality of one side, language is a means of control which can be analyzed based on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). CDA shows the hidden effect of features of a text by deconstructing linguistic elements. The present study qualitatively reveals that the relations of different sexes are much like the power relations which are controlled by discourse and linguistic features. It is an attempt to make it clear how linguistic elements and discourse structures explicitly and implicitly function in classifying reality, in producing, reorganizing and enforcing certain ideas, in persuading others and in controlling relations of power. So, it focuses on the social as well as grammatical aspects of the texts. The article also aims at discovering the way male and female interact ideologically with a number of discursive structures such as: nominals, passive structures, and address forms. The result shows that some ideologies about men and women are concerned with these structures in both English and Persian. It also makes it clear that women use these structures more than men do. They use more transformations to reorganize the experience and to have an indirect and implicit speech. Using sexist language creates an image of a society where men and women have unequal social, political and economic status.

Keywords:

language , sexism , nominal , Critical Discourse Analysis