5.2: What the English Language is Made Of

Many people run into trouble when trying to choose “appropriate” words in their everyday discourses. For example, imagine you’re getting pulled over for speeding. The policeman walks up to the side of your vehicle to request your license and registration. The policeman is female. Now her status has changed from policeman to police officer. While police officer is more inclusive to both sexes, policeman remains the standard in our culture, and we have yet to culturally adopt the term policewoman. Either way, you’re getting a ticket for speeding, but how will your interpretation of the citation change based on the sex of the officer? How will you describe the officer in your recounts to your friends or family?

Now you’re getting ready for a meeting, and the chairman of the board walks in. Until you see she’s a female--and now the chairperson has arrived. The English language is full of linguistic sexism, language that intentionally (or unintentionally) excludes or privileges one sex over the other. More often than not, linguistic sexism is excluding or trivializing women and what they do, while maintaining the sex status quo from which men are currently benefitting. Creating inclusive language for underrepresented bodies--specifically, the feminine and other “unmarked” gender categories--creates a reality more inclusive of all sexes and genders.⁶⁸ Anne Pauwels, Professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of London, identifies one of the major motivations for language change as “a desire to amend the present language system to achieve a symmetrical and equitable representation of women and men.”⁶⁹ Using inclusive language can shape our social realities and dialect. While this is not an exhaustive list, here are a few examples of using more inclusive language:

Table \(5.2.1\) Pronouns. Source: University of Wisconsin https://www.uwec.edu/usenate/.../130...veExamples.pdf.

	Example of Sexist/Gendered Usage	Explanation	Alternatives
The generic 'he'	Every student must have a pencil, and he should always bring it to class.	Defines student as exclusively male.	Every student must have a pencil and they should always bring it to class.
Man as a verb	I have four students to man the internship table.	Implies that persons referred to are exclusively male.	I have four students attend the internship table.
Man used to mean humankind	Is man inherently capitalistic?	The human race is interpreted then as male-centric, linguistically placing non- males on the outside of the species.	Is humankind inherently capitalistic? Other alternatives: human race, human beings.
Gendered words in titles and work positions	Chairman Freshman Fireman Policeman Postman	Assumes male dominance in these fields.	Chair or Chairperson First Year Firefighter Police officer Postal worker
Stereotyping	Using gender/sex qualifiers for certain occupations, such as: lady doctor or male nurse.	This assumes that a particular sex/gender is fit for only a particular set of jobs	Refrain from using gender markers, and refer to a female doctor simply as a doctor or a male nurse simply as a nurse. To avoid stereotyping occupations, vary pronoun usuage or use the singular they.
Referring to a married woman through her husband's name.	Mrs. John Smith	Defines a woman in terms of a man.	Jane Smith or with the appropriate honorific (such as doctor or captian)

⁶⁸ Frank, Francine Wattman and Paula A. Treichler. 1989. Language, Gender, and Professional Writing: Theoretical
Approaches and Guidelines for Nonsexist Language Usage. New York: The Modern Language Association of America