This document discusses the influence of feminism on language. It covers the history of feminism through three waves that addressed women's rights and equality. Historically, women were considered intellectually and physically inferior to men and did not have rights like voting or equal education and pay. Feminism challenged this patriarchal view and influenced language by addressing the sexism inherent in linguistic features like naming conventions, terms of endearment for women, and asymmetric categories for unmarried men and women. The document also examines differences in male and female language use and how feminism brought awareness to the exclusion and degradation of women in everyday English language.

1.  NAME SARA ISLAM
 RL NO 16
 SUBJECT LANGUAGE AND GENDER
 TOPIC The influence of feminism on
language
 Submitted to MA’AM AYESHA
 Department BS English 8th semester
 Date 24th July 2020

2.  Feminism is the belief that women should
have equal rights to men. It is a women’s
movement to struggle for the equality of rights
as social class.

3. The history of modern western feminist
movements is divided into waves. Each is
described as dealing with different aspects of
the same feminist issue.
 First wave of feminism
 Second wave of feminism
 Third wave of feminism

4. Historical content:
Women widely are consider to be:
 Intellectually inferior
 Physically weak
 Women could not vote
 They were not educated at schools etc

5.  Women could attend schools
 Society is patriarchal
 Women may have legal rights but they are still
treated as inferior
 Women did not receive equal pay for the same
work

6.  Women seem to be more equal to men.
 Women are no longer obligated to marry or
have children.
 The legal system is better of protecting
women’s rights.

7.  Language was a particular feature and target of
western women’s movement. Feminism is
influencing linguistic because it brought many
changes in language.
 The English language has gone through a lot of
changes over time especially grammatically
and modern English is much different from old
English.

8. The American feminist Robin Morgan claim that
we don’t even have our own names, but bear
that of the father until we exchange it for that
of the husband.

9.  Claim that term of endearment for women is
also terms for food.(honey, sweetie)
 Through lexical items such as Mrs/Miss, the
English language was said to define degraded
and stereotype women.

10.  Focus on how, in mixed sex talk, men dominate
the conversation, interupt their conversational
partner and are more successful at having the
topic they bring up, taken up.
 Male dominance approach

11.  In language and women’s place concerned
with the language, She discuss at length the
asymmetry of the pairs bachelor/spinster and
widow as English semantic categories available
for women and for men.

12. The vital features which distinguish women
language are:
 Use of super polite
 Correct Grammar
 Direct quotation
 Lexicons
 Questioning intonation
 Speaking in italics

13. • A general criticisms of English language is it
exclusion of women in every day language.
• Feminism and its different movements and
theories have been concerned with the
language and sexist language use.

14. ThankYou