Chapter 6. Gender representation in Chinese language
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Lan Li
Abstract
Different from Romanized languages with gender marker, the Chinese language does not have inflections in nouns, adjectives and verbs when the subject is a female. Instead, a semantic stem or the radical woman 女 (nü) is used to directly indicate femininity. This study takes a lexicographic and corpus approach to explore gender representation in Chinese and discusses its forms, meanings and usages. First, characters with the radical woman were classified into different semantic fields to see how they represent women and reflect social ideologies. Second, their representations in a modern Chinese dictionary were compared with a classic one to see the historical change. Third, the use of the words was explored in a mega-corpus of 287 million Chinese characters. It is interesting to see that more than 70% of the characters with the radical 女 (nü, woman) listed in classic Chinese dictionaries have vanished in modern society probably due to language evolution and social-cultural changes such as a shift in attitudes towards women. A few characters changed their female semantic element to a gender-neutral one. Gender representation in Chinese is also reflected in Chinese idioms, the word order and gendered third-person pronoun. Understanding these forms can provide insight into Chinese culture and raise awareness of shifting trends of their use in the language.
Abstract
Different from Romanized languages with gender marker, the Chinese language does not have inflections in nouns, adjectives and verbs when the subject is a female. Instead, a semantic stem or the radical woman 女 (nü) is used to directly indicate femininity. This study takes a lexicographic and corpus approach to explore gender representation in Chinese and discusses its forms, meanings and usages. First, characters with the radical woman were classified into different semantic fields to see how they represent women and reflect social ideologies. Second, their representations in a modern Chinese dictionary were compared with a classic one to see the historical change. Third, the use of the words was explored in a mega-corpus of 287 million Chinese characters. It is interesting to see that more than 70% of the characters with the radical 女 (nü, woman) listed in classic Chinese dictionaries have vanished in modern society probably due to language evolution and social-cultural changes such as a shift in attitudes towards women. A few characters changed their female semantic element to a gender-neutral one. Gender representation in Chinese is also reflected in Chinese idioms, the word order and gendered third-person pronoun. Understanding these forms can provide insight into Chinese culture and raise awareness of shifting trends of their use in the language.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- List of contributors ix
- Chapter 1. Researching the Chinese language and discourse 1
- Chapter 2. The distribution of null subjects in Chinese discourse 11
- Chapter 3. Conversational narrative marker 37
- Chapter 4. Windows of attention and the polysemy of V-kai 59
- Chapter 5. The acceptability of 把 ba +subject-oriented resultatives in Mandarin Chinese 73
- Chapter 6. Gender representation in Chinese language 101
- Chapter 7. Understanding stancetaking through gestures and linguistic practices in a public political debate in Hong Kong 119
- Chapter 8. Representations of Pinkunsheng in China’s university media 147
- Chapter 9. Language resources of Yunnan in “the Belt and Road” project 167
- Chapter 10. Impact of power relations on news translation in China 177
- Chapter 11. Translating puns in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 195
- Chapter 12. Translation and re-narration of Nainai 219
- Name index 229
- Subject index 231
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- List of contributors ix
- Chapter 1. Researching the Chinese language and discourse 1
- Chapter 2. The distribution of null subjects in Chinese discourse 11
- Chapter 3. Conversational narrative marker 37
- Chapter 4. Windows of attention and the polysemy of V-kai 59
- Chapter 5. The acceptability of 把 ba +subject-oriented resultatives in Mandarin Chinese 73
- Chapter 6. Gender representation in Chinese language 101
- Chapter 7. Understanding stancetaking through gestures and linguistic practices in a public political debate in Hong Kong 119
- Chapter 8. Representations of Pinkunsheng in China’s university media 147
- Chapter 9. Language resources of Yunnan in “the Belt and Road” project 167
- Chapter 10. Impact of power relations on news translation in China 177
- Chapter 11. Translating puns in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 195
- Chapter 12. Translation and re-narration of Nainai 219
- Name index 229
- Subject index 231
