Studies of Gender as Seen Through Pronominal Expressions

自20世纪60年代后期以来，人们从不同方面对性别问题进行了研究。然而，与西方国家相比，日本的性别问题还没有得到广泛的研究。本研究主要从社会语言学的角度来探讨性别和代词表达。女性主义语言学家经常引用杰斯巴森(1922)的《女人》一章作为歧视女性的典型作品。然而，我认为，当代对杰巴森反女权主义的批评是没有根据的，这表明杰巴森对女性语言的分析纯粹是从语言学的角度进行的描述，远远谈不上反女权主义。由于成功地引起了人们对女性语言的独特特征的关注，我已经证明了“女性”是性别研究史上的一项开创性工作。我还试图讨论中性代词，在英语中被称为“表现性代词”。他曾经被普遍用作中性单数代词，但由于女权主义者的批评，现在不再是这样了。我已经展示了用来替代不确定代词的各种代词，如Everyone，以及中性名词，如说话者或听者，并证明了英语仍处于寻找合适的中性第三单数代词的过渡期。最后，我还详细地讨论了man的用法和主席的用法。

Gender studies have been conducted from various aspects since the latter part of the 1960s. In Japan, however, gender has not been extensively studied in comparison with western countries. The present study is an attempt to explore gender and pronominal expressions mainly from a sociolinguistic perspective.Feminist linguists often cite a chapter entitled "The Woman" in Jespersen (1922) as a typical work that is biased against women. I have, however, argued that contemporary criticisms of Jespersen as anti-feminist are unfounded, demonstrating that Jespersen's analysis of women's language is purely descriptive from a linguistic standpoint and is far from being anti-feminist. I have shown that "The Woman" represents a pioneering work in the history of gender studies for having successfully drawn attention to the unique characteristics of women's language.I have also attempted to discuss gender-neutral pronouns, called "epicene pronouns" in English. Once "he" was commonly used as a gender-neutral singular pronoun, but it is no longer so because of the criticism of feminists. I have shown various substitutes for "he" as a pronominal replacement for indefinite pronouns, such as everyone, and gender-neutral nouns, such as a speaker or a hearer, and have demonstrated that English is still in the transitional period for finding an appropriate gender-neutral third singular pronoun. Finally I have argued about the usage of man and chairman in detail.