Gender-Neutral English Expressions and Korean EFL Students (성 중립적 영어 표현에 대한 대학생 학습자의 인식 연구)

김혜숙

Gender-Neutral English Expressions and Korean EFL Students

The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea
Abbr : 사회언어학
2008, 16(1), pp.105-129
Publisher : The Sociolinguistic Society Of Korea
Research Area : Humanities > Linguistics

김혜숙 ¹

¹건양대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This paper examines whether Korean students learning English are familiar with gender-neutral language. A total of 149 first-year university students were asked to choose the words they would use when speaking or writing English. The questions in the questionnaire consist of two types: Type I asked the students to arrange the given two words (e.g., gentlemen, ladies; boys, girls) in the parallel-pair form conjoined by and; Type II asked the students to choose one of the two words or phrases (e.g., policeman, police officer; anchorman, anchor). Of the eight parallel pairs in Type I, four were chosen where the word order of Korean and English is reversed (e.g., ladies and gentlemen) and the other four pairs have the same order (e.g., boys and girls) in both Korean and English. The students did better with the same order pairs than with the reversed order pairs with the exception of ladies and gentlemen. Of the nine pairs in Type II, a majority of both female and male students picked five gender-neutral words: anchor, firefighter, mail carrier, police officer and flight attendant. The four gender-specific words they preferred were chairman, salesman, freshman and actress.

KEYWORDS

gender-neutral, gender-specific, English word-order pairs, Korean word-order pairs

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

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