Sexism in Media

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categorising in two genders is problematic. Freed (2003:704) criticises the division of people into the categories of women and men, females and males. For example, transsexuals and intersexuals are to some extent excluded from these categorisations (Freed 2003:715). However, this will not be discussed more thoroughly and the traditional two-gender categorisation will be used. The opinions about linguistic sexism vary between linguists, some believe that sexist language characterises a sexist society, and others believe that sexist language influences society to be more sexist (Weatherall 2002:4). Significant when discussing this is as mentioned the theory of linguistic determinism, which is a theory which believes that language determines the way the world is perceived by the language-user (Mills 1995:84). A supporter of the theory of linguistic determinism, Spender (1980:96) argues that sexist language enables sexist world-views. She also argues that those with power, in other words men, have the ability to create language and consequently the reality (Spender 1980:97). Critics of linguistic determinism argue that if this would be the case, speakers of languages with very few words for colours would not be able to perceive different colours (Holmes 2008:336-337). However, it is vital to point out that two forms of the theory exist: the strong one that argues that language determines how we interpret the world and the weak one that argues that language is only one factor in how we construct the world (Pauwels 1998:83). According to Holmes (2008:350), most sociolinguists believe that language to some extent affects our world-view and consequently the way we view gender.