Showing posts with label Linguistics. Show all posts

Gender issues-I

From the ancient period of the world, people were discussing about the male dominancy in different countries whereas it has become melted down to a considerable extent in nowadays with new arrivals of social ideologies. This male dominancy governed the Eastern countries rather than western world in many ways. The depressed fair sex was harassed a lot in countries such as India by despoiling their human rights through dedications like “SATHIPUJA”. This male dominancy was not observed in the language in those days since there were crucial areas rather than language. The feminism movement was formed against these practices in different ways in the world with various goals.

This small article is to emphasize the mail dominancy which was not yet observed in the language.

Perhaps conventional grammarians will get irritated with this observation due to the convention breakdown of their schools. Even though the western English grammarians have compiled English grammar in a clear cut manner, it is a bit impossible job to find scientific studies in those. English nouns are considered as a compulsory part of the speech out of eight parts of speech. Nouns have been defined under four categories in gender as masculine, feminine, common and neuter; here the foremost concerns are masculine and feminine nouns in this nouns category. There are two specific places that are governed the male dominancy of this grammar lesson: when gender nouns are defined by grammarians; masculine has been taken first, any way that can be considered as a coincident but rules have been applied to masculine nouns in order to make them feminine by showing the male dominancy of the grammarians and the language. No any rule has been applied to feminine nouns in order to make them masculine.

A few rule applications can be considered in support of this gender issue here: a rule has been put forward to make feminine nouns through masculine by adding ‘ess’ suffix to the masculine;

e.g.: Lion - lioness

Actor - actress

Director - directress

Author - authoress

Poet - poetess

Some certain masculine forms out of the given examples have dropped out of the use in modern English but most of these are ruling the language until the present time. This is the foremost place that the male dominancy governs.

There were some certain movements in the world that fought against the mail dominancy and gender discriminations but this language fact was not seriously taken into their account. Visibly it doesn’t make physical ill treatments to females as it seems but a critical exclusion can be recognized through the language over here. For instance, these feminine words are not able to be formed without having masculine roots. It reflects the dependability of fair sex due to the gender fact. Feminism movement is the foremost driven force that fought for the gender parity in various forms in the world. Basically they were focusing on equal rights that were not well defined clearly what they are, in their studies. This feminism movement had some splits such as liberal feminists, Marxist feminists, radical feminists and later psychological feminists, post modern or post structural feminists, black feminists and so on. Their concerns were having contradictions in contrasting their ideologies each other. The concerns of radical and Marxist feminists were quite similar and they were not totally focusing on the gender fact but the oppressed social class.

As they believed, as long as these social classes exist as oppressed and oppressor, gender discrimination goes on continuously. Once this social difference came to the end, oppressed feminine also will get free from the oppression.

Who is a linguist? To answer this question let us see at the common thinking patterns of the society. If this question is raised to a person who is external to the discipline of linguistics, they would answer in this manner: the person, who speaks a number of languages, is a linguist. This also happens if the person has got to know at least a bit of linguistics but most of the people would ask first what linguistics is. If we introduce ourselves as linguists to somebody else, sooner the question would raise that how many languages do you speak? Why? Because this is the meaning that is known by populace with reference to the linguist.

If somebody has got to know a number of languages, he is acquainted as a polyglot, not a linguist. Nobody could become a linguist by knowing more than one language; he or she has to go beyond that acquisition to become a linguist but some grammarians who lived in early days also believed that the people who speak more than one language are called as linguists, which is not correct. It doesn’t emphasize that the polyglot can’t become a linguist; depending upon the approach of the language study even polyglot can become a linguist but just speaking a number of languages, no one can become a linguist, even if he speaks ten languages, he is not legitimate to claim for a linguist.

So who is a linguist? The linguist may speak only one language, sometimes he may speak more than one language; the implication is, this is not a contingency with language speaking capabilities. So, very simply linguist is a scholar who studies the language in a systematic manner, in other words the person who studies the language in a scientific manner. The linguist looks at the language in order to understand how it works but not how it uses. He doesn’t want to learn how to use the language whereas studies underlying structure of the language. This can be very simply understood once we defined what linguistics is. Linguistics is scientific study of the language or let’s say that it is a systematic study of the language. The person, who does this, is a linguist.

Traditional grammarians are called as linguists time and again which is totally wrong. Eminent Sri Lankan scholar: Kumarathunga Munidasa is acquainted as a linguist by some writers without understanding the status of a linguist. Even though his studies deal with the language and speaks more than one language, it’s not adequate enough to claim for a linguist since he has already become a traditional grammarian.

Now it is obvious that the linguist is not a person who speaks more than one language, most probably he would be a polyglot as far as he doesn’t study the language in a scientific manner in order to understand how the language works. Taking into consideration a metaphor, this can be understood very clearly: there are people who are able to drive number of vehicle kinds but they don’t know how those vehicles are operating whereas a mechanic may not be able to drive even a one vehicle but he knows very well how this vehicle runs with all kinds of requirements. In that sense a mechanic is similar to a linguist whereas a driver is similar to a polyglot if he drives more than one vehicle type.