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Essay / The Concept of Tabula Rasa: Humans are born with a “blank slate”
Language was the first stepping stone that defined human communication. It has the power to change the world around us and also has the power to reshape our thoughts and our perception of the society in which we live. We have come a long way toward establishing gender equality in society, but linguistic bias can still have disastrous consequences by altering our understanding of global workings and issues at the center. Linguistic gender has been the central topic of discussions and debates. Gender is constrained by the boundaries of social construction and language has an important role to play in establishing the foundations of gender divisions. An example of this is the development of language and how sexism has been a continuing backdrop: She as He Suffix: She, Wo as Man Suffix: Woman, Fe as Male: Female, Hu as Man Suffix: Human and Person. with 'Son'. These ideas were made by men with default gender at the center. The article recognizes this difference and discusses the central role that language continues to play in our society and in our lives. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essayLanguage is fundamental to all societies. It allows people to communicate and receive and share ideas or values. Many philosophers, writers, and feminist thinkers have considered language an essential area of study and analysis, particularly in exploring how language helps perpetuate patriarchy and discrimination against women. The relationship between language and gender has been an important topic of discussion from the start of the second wave of the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Dale Spender, an Australian feminist writer, argued in his book "Man-Made Language" that “men, as the dominant group, produced language, thought and reality”. For Spender, language and the rules of language are under the control of men and reflect masculine values. As a result, women are either invisible or defined as the “other.” They find it difficult to change or question this situation since they have to use the language they inherited. Language therefore perpetuates male supremacy. However, an important question raised by critics was whether language could be the powerful dominating influence that Spender represented. Language is often seen as a means of perpetuating the subordination of women. Several feminist writers and scholars have drawn attention to the sexism inherent in language that contains supposedly generic uses of masculine terms, particularly the so-called gender-neutral "man" and masculine pronouns. Over the years, feminist philosophy of language has seen a major shift from the material to the symbolic – from sociological understandings of patriarchy to explorations of the contingencies of gender identities. Is the language neutral? Feminist philosophers and writers have argued that “language is not neutral” but is man-made. The words and expressions we use today were created in a heavily male-oriented culture and still reflect sexist attitudes. For example, a mixed group is called "guys", but never "girls". The language assumes that men are the norm and women are the “other.” We often view calling a woman by a masculine term as a good thing, but calling a man by a feminine term is negative – confirming the position of men as superior towomen. Grammatical gender as a concept is found in a quarter of the world's languages, you can sort all nouns into masculine or feminine. La or le in French, Der, die or das in German - das means neutral. In Zande, which is found in some Central African countries, there are four grammatical genders: human masculine, human feminine, animate and inanimate. There is virtually no convincing argument for the use of grammatical gender in languages. A vaguely convincing argument is that it can help clear up ambiguities and slightly speed up word recognition. However, three-quarters of the world's languages do just fine without it. Gendered language creates a number of problems that directly (or indirectly) affect the way everyone thinks. " and "jagged," while Spanish speakers — who classify the key as feminine — were more likely to say it was "golden," "intricate" and "small." These differences say a lot about gender roles in society. French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir writes in her book “The Second Sex” that “throughout history, the standard measure of what we consider to be human – both in philosophy and in society in general – has been. been a particularly masculine vision.' Some philosophers, like Aristotle, have been explicit in equating full humanity with masculinity. It is for this reason that de Beauvoir says that the Self (or "I") of philosophical knowledge is by. masculine defect, and that its binary couple – the female – is therefore something else, which she calls “the Other”. The Self is active and knowing, while the Other is everything that the Self rejects: passivity, silence and impotence Masculine character of language The Belgian philosopher and analyst Luce Irigaray is primarily interested in the idea of sexual difference. Irigaray asserts that all language is essentially masculine in nature. In Sex and Genealogies, she writes: “Everywhere, in everything, the discourse of men, their values, their dreams and their desires are law. Man, as an animal gifted with language, as a rational animal, has always represented the only possible subject of discourse, the only possible subject. And its language seems to be the universe itself.” She further suggests that gender has a correlation with desire and therefore each gender has a relationship with madness. This challenges the long tradition of equating masculinity with rationality and femininity with irrationality. Irigaray understands that sexual differences differ from social gender in several ways. She emphasizes that “sexual difference expresses deeply rooted fantasies which are not directly of social origin, if by “society” we mean a set of collective arrangements into which each individual enters and by which he is shaped. » Irigaray says: “The human subject, woman or man, is not a simple social effect. » Furthermore, for Irigaray, men and women assume different subject positions by assuming symbolic meanings, a process that establishes our fundamental identities as men and women (boys and girls). It is only after we have assimilated the rudiments of these identities that we are then able to respond to and adopt particular – socially and historically changing – gender norms. Furthermore, our sexual identities are psychological and bodily, unlike gender roles, which are assumed by the mind rather than the body. The Masculine Line Sexism in language appears in many forms: an obvious example is the use of the pronoun "he" to refer to both men and women, which assumes male supremacy and subjugates women. The roots of "male language", where "he" is considered. = .