Changing the Language changes minds

• Autor: Adela Pérez del Viso - Marcela Clark

San Luis, Noviembre 2013.

Instituto de Formación Docente Contínua San Luis.

The study of language through pragmatics implies many advantages, such as the analysis of people´s intended meanings in comparison to what they assume to be the truth and their presuppositions. All of this is quite related to the type of culture the speakers share. Pragmatics focuses its attention on the relationship between linguistic forms and their users, a kind of relationship that mandatorily includes the context in which the speech act takes place. This new science has brought light to the invisible meaning which is hiding behind any language. Linguists have labeled English language as being mainly male-oriented. Nevertheless, new tendencies are emerging in order to undermine this flaw.

One clear example of the lack of balance in gender that appears to lurk inside the English language is the term “mankind”. This word represents “everyone”; however, as the American feminist writers Casey Miller and Kate Swift clearly state, “mankind” constitutes also a semantic mechanism that operates to keep women invisible. Nowadays it can be said that these types of devices have the inner potential to creating and maintaining presuppositions in the mind of the speaker. To support this idea, we can analyse some words related to professions (such as the term “Doctor”, “Lawyer”, etc). Here, unless it is made explicitly clear that we are talking about a female doctor, the hearer might assume that the text is referring to a male individual. Additionally, it can be said that the speaker uses a reference to enable a listener to identify something. Hence, when this speaker talks about a doctor or a lawyer, the listener might infer that the linguistic form alludes to a “male” doctor or lawyer, even though the reference could be pointing at a woman who is a professional. What happens in this case is that women are made invisible. This phenomenon occurs, with all probability, because English language reflects male orientation.

This tendency is also displayed on some other features which are worth commenting, such as the Cultural stereotypes, with utmost reflection on language as it is used every day in context. Taking again the examples of “Doctor”, “Lawyer” and other words related to liberal professions, they can be considered samples of two different stereotypical models already built in society around what a man and a woman constitute. The term Doctor is generally...