SEXISM IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE GRAMMAR AND CHALLENGES ON L2 USAGE

GILBERT, CHRISTIAN UCHECHUKWU
Abstract
The article assays to find out how sexism in English language grammar affects the L2 users of
the language. The study made use of the binding principle propounded by Noam Chomsky in
1981 within the domain of syntax. The study investigated the grammatical units and how the
linguistic items exercise influence on one another in a local discourse to determine the
relationship between the anaphors and pronominal to their antecedents that warranted the
alleged sexism. 47 linguistic items were tested morphologically and in 17 sentence structures
including the traditional plural “they” and the singular “they” in a generic third-person
pronoun among others. The study both exposed some disparities in the structures that could
create perplexity for a L2 user and other complicating ones invented by feminists with a view
to create gender equality pronouns. The position of this paper is that a possible step to redesign
the English language generic pronouns to presumptive pronoun (? ) for “him”, “her” and “it”
concurrently is an option to check sexism in English language grammar. This study links
anthropological linguistics and sociolinguistics which embraces language, culture and syntax.
Keywords: grammar, gender ,language, pronouns, syntax, sexism,
Introduction
Grammatical studies usually investigate the characteristic of linguistic items in a given
context in line with the rules of language. Language in any part of the world is rule guided; the
rules work in harmony with the culture of the owners of the language. The variationsthat exist in
the process of word derivations,structural organization and usage among languages are due to the
cultural differences existing in the different language communities.The rulesthat guide the study
of linguistic items in a language also study’s the aspects of linguistics that has to do with the
building up of meanings in communication through the proper use of the grammatical units.
Different scholars and schools of thought, have had interests in the grammatical studies of
languages from the 1950s on how to make language studies simpler, to explicitly describe the
inner working and reveal all hints of the language, the correlation of the components, the
interconnections, the differences and even how to study, learn and teach linguistically the
structures ofthe language (Taiwo, 2010; Nwala, 2015; Gilbert, 2019).