The Impact of Sex Discriminative Language Upon Elt

Abstract

In the last two decades Macedonia has been literally striving through a process of long-lasting and tiresome transition, which caused the old, statically defined, unchangeable relations to undergo numerous crucial changes reflected on almost all vital social levels, ranging from the institutionalized forms of living and all the way through to the family and personal life.

These changes have an inevitable reflection in the language as one of the most sensitive and truthful human cultural “mirrors”. In spite of the fact that awareness of linguistic sex discrimination has only begun to develop gradually in Macedonia in the recent years, it is a process which is still not entirely completed but which has the potential to affect certain language teaching aspects, both in Macedonian and English. The contact with English has only reinforced this process and stressed the need to make Macedonian native speakers aware of the existence of this phenomenon and its implication upon teaching and learning English.

This paper looks into some instances of sex discriminative language in Macedonian and English and their implications in preparing prospective English language teachers to deal with them successfully thus helping English language students to develop their awareness of this phenomenon and its impact upon increasing their communicative competence.

Key words: Sex, Gender, Language, Culture, English language teaching