Srijana Bhandari_Journal 4

In this reading, we learn about the feminist approach to the language and psychology of the language. Feminist researchers have shown how language has intentionally or unintentionally created a barrier between the understanding of gender neutrality and made women invisible in this process. This topic was very interesting to me as while reading it, I was comparing it to my own mother language. Especially sex-marking was something I noticed is there even in my mother language. We usually don’t use it as a pronoun but end our sentences with certain words denoted for the specific gender like “cha” for male and “che” for females. But the modern language, like the one we talk back home, only includes “cha” for all gender which I guess shows maleness as a norm but we can also see as a revolution of neutral-gender. Because then we do not need to know the sex of an individual to refer to them.
Using man as a reference to humans has surely made women invisible but it also has highlighted the work women do. Instead of calling a woman just a doctor even in my country, we call them “Doctornee”. The “new” is added at the end because she is a female doctor. We can also take the example of teachers. Most of the school even now in our country calls female teacher miss instead of a professor or teacher. All the highlights in the language of what women do show how language has been dominated by males, whichever language you talk about.
Generic claims are very common everywhere we go, especially regarding femininity and masculinity. Courage and strength are always associated with masculinity and emotions and families are associated with femininity. It is okay for a father not to be close with his children but it’s not okay for a mother to have a distant relationship with her children. As suggested in the reading women take a normative concept, an ideal standard. When I decided to come to the USA I had many people questioning me and telling me, being a girl going away from your family will you be okay? I was kept in the ideal standard of what a girl should be doing, living with their parents and after a while getting married. As I see, generic claims are the stereotypical definition of gender difference. And it states a hypothetical sense in people of what they should be doing.