Essay on Discrimination of the Woman in the Spanish Language

Introduction

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The Spanish language and its grammatical construction has come under scrutiny with a special focus on its discrimination of the woman. Attention has been paid to role of the woman in the Spanish language owing to the manner in which Spanish can be construed as a sexist language that discriminates on the woman. Grammar and language are significant aspects underlying the construction of social concepts such as sexism and gender bias. Even in the United States, the womens movement featured specific attention to the use of language as an expression tool that advanced the infringement of the female gender. In this way, it is important to examine the grammatical sexism that exist in Spanish as a language in addition to the various constructions of grammar as related to the issue. The examination of the discrimination of the woman in the Spanish language is significant owing to the fact that Spanish is one of the major languages in the world today. It is also important to note that Spanish is one of the major languages in the world that features a heavy domination of the masculine in its grammatical construction. The examination of sexism and the discrimination of women in the Spanish language grammatically will be elaborated with specific reference to the Dominican Republic.

Development

The examination of sexism begins with identifying ways in which the masculine in Spanish language is superior to the feminine. According to Eisenberg (189), one of the most evident ways this discrimination shows through language is the use of the masculine plural, which is used for any cluster with a male element irrespective of the quantity or percentage. Additionally, the masculine is also used for female-male pair, which means that the Spanish language and grammar fails to give the female in such a pair recognition or mention. In this respect, the grammar in the language blatantly ignores the female in a pair consisting of both genders. The masculine plural as grammatically used in Spanish is one of the first lessons that is learnt in Spanish. In this way, the masculine plural underlie the basis of grammatical construction unless there is established need for use of the feminine which means that the masculine plural is the default form in grammar as related to the Spanish language. It is also important to note that the masculine plural is used to refer to both the female and the male with an example of a word such as uno which is a pronominal.

Another evident discrimination of the woman in the Spanish language grammatically entails the undifferentiated nature of the masculine form as the typical or basic form. In this way, Eisenberg (190) notes that the feminine form is derived from the masculine and has no grammatical construction that stands independent from the masculine. For instance, the feminine word profesora is derived from the masculine standard form professor. This is just one example but many grammatical words in the Spanish language that follow the same form. The male pronoun in Spanish is also typically easier and shorter in addition to being less complex to use. Take the example of the masculine word el which is easier to pronounce and use contrary to its feminine counterpart ella which has more syllables and appears complicated to use. In the masculine form, the word el is an adjective that is also similar to the definite article el. Additionally, the existence of contractions in the Spanish language are only permitted in the masculine and as such underlie the basis structure of the language. Contraction such as del and al in addition to the shortening of words in the masculine form which are also specifically applicable to the masculine but not feminine forms. For instance, the word buen is a permissible shortened form of the masculine form bueno but the feminine alguna cannot be shortened in a grammatically correct form to say algun.

The mentioned grammatical aspects and the construction of grammar in the Spanish language thus points to the dominance of the masculine in the language and highlights the discrimination of the feminine or of the woman. To further elaborate the inherent way in which Spannish as a language and its grammatical construction discriminates on women, it is important to look at the difference between English and Spanish especially to a learner. Ilarregui (64) notes that the first thing that someone learns during their initial learning of the Spanish language is that Spanish has genders as a key factor in its grammar contrary to the English language. In this way, every word in Spanish is either or masculine or feminine. La mujer denotes a woman while el hombre is a man. However most of the words are accorded the masculine form for instance a map takes the masculine form el mapa and not the feminine la mapa. The domination of the masculine over the feminine in Spanish can also be elaborated using a difference in how clusters are constructed grammatically in Spanish. For instance, in English, the combination of sisters and brothers would be collectively referred to as siblings. Siblings is a collective neutral term that does not accord gender implications to the collective term. In Spanish however, the collective term hermanos is used to mean both male and female siblings yet it is a masculine form in grammar. The feminine is not given priority in the construction of such collective terms despite a difference in gender and neither is neutrality established as is the case with the English language. This gender dominance in the Spanish language is a clear indication of the sexist nature of the Spanish language in addition to being a reflection of how grammatical construction of language discriminates the woman.

By evaluating the construction of grammar in the Spanish language, it can be said that it is true the language has discriminatory tendencies especially in light of the masculine plural and the construction of pronouns and adjectives among others. The significance of looking at the discrimination of the woman in the Spanish language is based on the recent attention the language has received from scholars and other quarters who are proposing changes that would make Spanish a more neutral language both grammatically and in its construction. Proponents of change in the Spanish language note that the apparent discrimination of women by the language and its grammar lessens the significance of women and that a language should have neutral grammar, which does not make the feminine invisible in its grammatical context. Further, the precedence of the masculine dominance in the languages grammar and the fact that it underlies the standard form of the language indicates discrimination of the woman and needs remedying. In this sense, language is evaluated as a tool of discrimination and dominance.

Conclusion

The elaboration given in the paper concerning the manner in which the Spanish language discriminates on the woman lies majorly in the fact that words are accorded gender in Spanish as opposed to languages like English. However, it is also important to note that the construction of language and the various grammatical nuances it adopts are the result of a long process of evolution of language in addition to other factors such a culture, tradition and structures of the Spanish speaking people such as the ones in the Dominican Republic ("Spanish In The Dominican Republic). Efforts geared towards neutralizing the Spanish language may succeed in making the language more gender-sensitive but will also succeed in making the language more complex and less pleasing. The formation of language and the grammatical details that form the basis of words give special meaning to various words and even some form of character to the language. Efforts geared towards changing a language defy the long process that goes into the formation of language and the characterization of grammar of the specific language. It is important to note that this paper has established the discriminatory nature of the Spanish language grammatically and given various examples of the masculine dominance as established. However, this grammatical discrimination is not reflective in a complete manner of the societys view on women. Language sexism and discrimination is thus an area that require further studying and more examination if the concept of discrimination is to be understood more comprehensively.

Works Cited

"Spanish In The Dominican Republic | Learn Spanish Online For Free With Veintemundos". Veintemundos.Com, 2016, http://www.veintemundos.com/en/spanish/dominican-republic/.Eisenberg, Daniel. "The Editors Column. Grammatical Sexism in Spanish." Journal of Hispanic Philology 9.3 (1985): 189-196.

Ilarregui, Gladys M. "Is the Spanish language sexist? An Investigation of Grammatical Gender. Es sexista la lengua espanola?. Una investigacion sobre el genero gramatical." Women and Language 20.2 (1997): 64-66.