No attempt is made here to construct a theory about language and sexism, but examples of English usage are provided as data which would have to be accounted for by any general statements regarding the nature and function of sexist language in our society. The examples are taken from the English lexicon and syntactic structure, with emphasis on…

Drawing on recent research on sexism in English and the ways in which social forces affect language structure, this paper shows how prescriptive statements about English have been incorporated into linguistic grammars as descriptions of language. It is claimed that Chomsky's "universal grammar" is masculinist and that it is contradicted…