Abstract
Non-sexism is one of the outstanding and obvious proofs of how social and cultural changes are taken into account in the English language. However, it is still a usage problem for natives and learners alike. This paper uses the degendering of phoric elements as an illustration of efforts in the 9th edition of Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English (OALD9) to capture and express social and cultural changes in the English language. It also attempts to point out some mismatches between rules and actual practice in this enterprise. Finally, it intends to show how the dictionary may act as an ideological tool, imposing, sustaining, highlighting, and perpetuating some points of view to the detriment of others. In practice, the use of more than one structure to achieve non-sexism makes fluency difficult and writing cumbersome.
Highlights
Gender-referring usage in English has tended to become an issue in English teaching but even in English native speakers' everyday communication (Mulamba and Tshimanga 2006)
This paper was based on the premise that non-sexism is one of obvious proofs of the interaction between social and cultural changes in the English speech community
For illustrative purposes, it drew on OALD9 in order to address the degendering of phoric elements and the related efforts to capture and express social and cultural changes in the English language
Summary
Gender-referring usage in English has tended to become an issue in English teaching but even in English native speakers' everyday communication (Mulamba and Tshimanga 2006). Far from remaining purely descriptive, some grammars and studies have tended towards 'prescriptivism' to impose the new rules The latter serve, among other things, to account for the changes in the language usage as a result of cultural and social changes, viz. From a systemic functional perspective, language being made up of various systems which in turn comprise various subsystems (Halliday 2004), the choice of a given system to the detriment of another or others is to be considered as always motivated It is in this framework that the use of masculine phoric elements as epicenes has been decried for being genderbiased (Mills 1995). After a short discussion of the methodological issues, the paper will first explore gender-indexing phoric elements in English, pointing out when they may be gendered or ungendered
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
