Language as Prejudice

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the semantics of female suppression and derogation in various cultural proverbs. The paper explains that a proverb is figurative communication with instructive functions that support the male attempt at maintaining control over dialogue in society. The paper examines the portrayal of womanhood in cultural proverbs, finding to to be commonly negative: Women are typically portrayed as being unreasonable, cynical, indulgent and feeble. The paper explores oral literature, especially in male dominated cultures, identifying the role of male oriented language in various proverbs which indicate prejudice and antagonism toward women in social communication.

From the Paper:

"Proverbs and sayings in many languages express the view that women are always talking. Furthermore, stereotypes which infer that woman talk more politely and that women use more questions have been commonly believed by the public. Two Japanese proverbs proclaim 'Where there are women and geese, there's noise' and 'when three women get together, it's noisy.' Obviously, these two proverbs suggest to us that women talk too much. Depending upon the context of the conversation, women's over excessive participation in dialogue may assume to be nonsense. Present day Japanese language has evolved very differently from European languages. One relatively unique aspect of Japanese is the diversity of its gender constructs and their usage."

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