Topic > The concept of Tabula Rasa: Humans are born with a “blank slate”

Language was the first stepping stone that defined human communication. It has the power to change the world around us and also has the power to reshape our thoughts and perception of the society we live in. We have come a long way in establishing gender equality in society, but linguistic biases can still have disastrous consequences in altering our understanding of how the world works and the issues at its core. Linguistic genre was the central topic of discussions and debates. Gender is limited by the boundaries of social construct, and language has an important role to play in laying the foundations of gender divisions. An example of this is the development of language and how sexism has been its ongoing backdrop: She as He Suffix: She, Wo as Man Suffix: Woman, Fe as Male: Female, Hu as Man Suffix: Human and Person with "Son". These ideas were fabricated by men who put the default gender at the center. The article recognizes this difference and discusses the critical role that language continues to play in our society and our lives. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Language is fundamental to all societies. It allows people to communicate and receive and share ideas or values. Many feminist philosophies, writers, and thinkers have seen language as a critical area of ​​study and analysis, particularly to explore the ways in which language helps perpetuate patriarchy and discrimination against women. The relationship between language and gender has been an important topic of discussion since the beginning of the second wave feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Dale Spender, an Australian feminist writer, argues in her book 'Man-Made Language' that "males, as the dominant group, produced language, thought and reality". For Spender, language and the rules of language are under male control and reflect male values. As a result, women are invisible or defined as “the other.” They find it difficult to change or challenge this situation as they have to use the language they inherited. Language, therefore, perpetuates male supremacy. However, an important question raised by critics was whether language could be the powerful dominant influence Spender represented. Language is often seen as a vehicle to perpetuate the subordination of women. Several feminist writers and scholars have paid attention to the sexism inherent in language that contains seemingly generic uses of masculine terms, particularly the supposedly neuter "man" and masculine pronouns. Over the years there has been a great drift in feminist philosophy of language from the material to the symbolic – from sociological interpretations of patriarchy to explorations of the contingencies of gender identities. Is the language neutral? Feminist philosophers and writers have argued that “language is not neutral,” but is created by man. The words and phrases we use today were created in a highly male-centric culture and still reflect sexist attitudes. For example, a mixed-gender group is referred to as “boys” but never “girls.” The language assumes that men are the norm and women are the “other.” We often believe that calling a woman a masculine term is a good thing, but calling a man a feminine term is bad, supporting the position of men as superior to women. Grammatical gender as a concept is found in a quarter of the world's languages, you can sort all nouns into masculine or feminine. La or le in French, Der, dieor das in German: das stands for neutral. In Zande, found in some Central African countries, there are four grammatical genders: human male, human female, animate and inanimate. There are almost no convincing arguments in favor of the grammatical use of gender in languages. A vaguely convincing argument is that it can help clarify ambiguities and slightly speed up word recognition. However, three-quarters of the world's languages ​​get by just fine without it. Gendered language creates a number of problems that directly (or indirectly) affect the way you think. For example, when asked to describe a key, German speakers, who classify the key as masculine, tend to associate it with "hard", "heavy". ” and “jagged,” while Spaniards, who classify the key as feminine, were more likely to say it was “golden,” “intricate,” and “small.” These differences say a lot about gender roles in society. The French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir writes in her book “The Second Sex” that “throughout history, the standard measure of what we consider human – both in philosophy and in society at large – has been a typically male view.” , have been explicit in equating full humanity with masculinity. It is for this reason that de Beauvoir claims that the Self (or “I”) of philosophical knowledge is by default male, and its binary pair – the female – is, therefore, something else, which she calls “the Other”, is active and aware, while the Other is everything that the Self rejects: passivity, voicelessness and impotence of language Belgian artist Luce Irigaray is primarily concerned with the idea of ​​sexual difference. Irigaray states that all language is essentially male in nature. In Sex and Genealogies he writes: “Everywhere, in everything, the speeches of men, the values, the dreams and desires of men are law. Man, as an animal endowed with language, as a rational animal, has always represented the only possible subject of discourse, the only possible subject. And its language seems to be the universe itself.” It also suggests that sex has a correlation with desire and, consequently, all sex has a relationship with madness. This calls into question the long tradition of equating masculinity with rationality and femininity with irrationality. Irigaray believes that sexual differences are different from social gender in several ways. He emphasizes that "sexual difference expresses profound fantasies that are not directly of social origin, if by 'society' we mean a set of collective arrangements into which each individual enters and by which he is formed." “the human subject, woman or man, is not a mere social effect”. Furthermore, for Irigaray, men and women assume different subject positions by taking on symbolic meanings, a process that establishes our basic identities as men and women (boys and girls). Only after assuming the rudiments of these identities do we come to respond to and assume particular, socially and historically changing gender norms. Furthermore, our sexual identities are psychic and corporeal, unlike gender roles, which are assumed by the mind rather than the body. The male line Sexism in language appears in many forms: a clear example is the use of the pronoun “he” to refer to both men and women, which assumes male supremacy and subjugates women. The roots of the “language of man,” where “he” is considered a generic pronoun and “mankind” is used to describe the entire human race, describe inherited prejudices against males. The period between the 17th and 18th centuries was one in which male grammarians established rules that explicitly stated that = .