Language is uniquely human. Our innate form of communication—the complex ability to express, to embed meaning and symbol to grunts and breaths, and to collectively create and uphold complex systems of grammar—belongs solely to our species. Yet, this unique expression is marred by constant conflict. Language is not the straightforward expression of reality, but a perpetual struggle for meaning that occurs at the intersection of culture, history, identity, and oppression. In this fluid battle of expression, it is rare to find a true representation of reality. Instead, language reflects the reality of the dominant classes who are historically and perpetually provided the power to embed meaning as they deem fit. Thus, because language provides the structure for reality, and the dominant class controls this structure, language oppresses by encoding the desired reality of the dominant class. Linguistic oppression is therefore the obfuscation of reality.
The interplay between language and reality has persisted since antiquity. Since Plato, linguists and philosophers alike have theorized about the intricate relationship shared by language and thought. In the 21st century, linguist Benjamin Whorf formalized this with his theory of linguistic relativity, which proposed that language alters an individual’s perception by subtly imparting its structures onto the subconscious (Whorf). For example, differences in the articulation of time in language yields different conceptions of reality: Chinese speakers, who know next week as 上个星期 (up week) and last week as 下个星期（down week), are conditioned by their language to perceive time vertically while English speakers understand it horizontally (Kramsch 35). Yet, language’s impact on reality transcends past these simple differences in articulations of time and sense. It provides a framework to thought, constructing cognitive processes around “inexorable laws of patterns” to create “a guide to social reality” in one’s mind (Whorf 173). Language becomes the foundation for reality and its understanding. Because language functions as the “frameworks that inform what we know [and] shape what we can know”, it follows that language provides for a specific articulation of reality (Riner 4). This relationship between language, thought, and reality is vital because perception is “determined by the very structures of the particular language that [one] speaks” (Cameron 150). In essence, language defines and constrains the reality one can realize.
Critically, this subtle influential nature of language provides it “an enormous capacity to wield oppression” (Riner 5). Its ability to invisibly entrench certain realities enables it to “construct worlds for popular consumption under the guise of being simple narrations of reality” (Riner 6). But this construction does not serve all realities equally, instead, as linguist Susan Gal notes, fixing a “particular vision of social reality … that serve[s] the interests of the dominant classes” into its structures (qtd. in Saul). Hence, today, the dominance of the White male class has encoded the andro- and Eurocentric worldview into language, thus oppressing the realities of the non-male and nonwhite. This paper explores three key linguistic consequences of this entrenchment: the assumption of the male norm, inequities in meaning, and hermeneutical injustice.
The most insidious aspect of linguistic oppression is its normative nature—grammar inherently implies a correct order of the world. Take, for example, the male norm. Many languages possess “a hidden yet consensual norm” that the “prototypical human being is male” (Menegatti and Rubini 2). This assumption manifests in the male generic: the use of words like mankind and him to refer to the whole of humanity. This use of the “he” as an expression for all asserts that the human is male, inexorably relegating the woman to an ostracized other, whose existence is derived from man (Saul). The implication of this male generic is that by the pure sake of her being a woman becomes different from humanity, her existence being an indictable deviation from the purported norm. She is rendered out of place in her own reality. This sexism is replicated more subtly in the grammatical structures which “normative[ly] embed gender bias and sexism” (Menegatti and Rubini 2). Gendered languages, for example, also use the masculine norm to refer to all, again implying the dominance of maleness. In gendered Italian and German, the masculine “studenti and studenten” (student) or “chirugo and primo ministro” (surgeon and prime minister) are used to describe all genders, while the feminine professions “infermieria (nurse) or osteric (midwife)” cannot be used to refer to men and require the creation of an equal male counterpart (Menegatti and Rubini 8). This phenomenon also occurs in non-gendered language, where male terms (like actor) can serve as a generic term for all, while the female derivative term (actress) remains reserved for its specific use. This assumption of maleness in language renders “females invisible in people’s imagery and memory” (Menegatti and Rubini 8). The masculine generic implies a woman’s unimportance to humanity, her role becoming both secondary and invisible. Language defines reality, and the assumption of maleness as an accurate stand-in for humanity denies a woman’s right to equal existence.
Linguistic oppression extends past inequitable grammar to inequities in the lexicon, where the connotations and categorizations of words referring to social groupings entrench a group’s inferior or superior position. The racism of the English language exemplifies these asymmetrical definitions, as the language “transmits the white American’s inferior definition of blackness…and the superior definition of whiteness” to its speakers (Burgest 43). For example, in English, “the word whiteness has 134 synonyms; 44 of which are favorable and pleasing to contemplate” (Burgest 38). Conversely, the word “blackness has 126 synonyms 60 of which are distinctly unfavorable and none of them positive…[including] malignant, wicked, and sinister” (Burgest 38). The whiteness of the English language attempts to dictate the existence of Black Americans by racist bounds, linguistically constraining the Black existence to be defined by its discriminatory terms.
Language fails women similarly in definition. For women, the issue of definition is often a matter of undue sexualization. For instance, Lakoff’s master–mistress dichotomy: the two are supposed semiotic gender parallels yet fail to commute across gender (19). Master is reserved “for a man who has acquired consummate ability in some field”, the term defined solely by ability and talent (Lakoff 19). On the other hand, its feminine counterpart, mistress, is “restricted to its sexual sense of ‘paramour’” (Lakoff 19). A woman cannot be a mistress of her craft the way a man can be a master of his, and her alleged feminine parallel can only be used to address her sexuality, not her ability. This definitive asymmetry, in which women are sexualized or debased, is a linguistic theme. There is the lady-gentleman parallel, where, as Lakoff notes, “lady imparts a frivolous, or non-serious tone to the sentence”, while gentleman implies no such flippancy (17). The spinster-bachelor example further demonstrates this issue. The two are essentially equal, but the word bachelor dons a complimentary air, while spinster is “pejorative with connotations of fussiness” (Saul). Moreover, while language speaks more of men—there are far more words for men than women—it speaks of women more sexually. In fact, “the number of expressions to refer to promiscuous women is 10 times greater than those to refer to men” (Saul). The maleness of the lexicon consequently transcribes a sexist view of a woman into reality—she is, by definition, limited to frivolity, flippancy, and sexualization. If she refuses to be sexualized, she is then insulted. Her reality is then limited, by the constraints of the language, to this inferior definition, just as the prevailing Whiteness of the English language limits the Black reality by its the racist definition of the Black experience.
This lexical prescription, in which inferior classes are limited to the definitions provided by an oppressive language, is the phenomenon of “hailing” (Riner 7). When one is “hailed by a particular linguistic form”, they subconsciously “respond to the hail [as] an act of submission to the authority which enacted it” (Riner 7). Thus, when a language hails the oppressed by the definition of the oppressor—when English hails the Black individual as inferior or the woman as sexual or non-serious—it demarcates society’s understanding of their existence. It oppresses the marginalized by reinforcing the desired reality of the dominant class and “indoctrinat[ing] individuals into the norms and power relations of their social order” (Riner 8). The inequities in meaning and definition thus oppress by redefining the reality of the oppressed through the eyes of the oppressor.
If language is an expression of reality, perhaps its most sinister failure is hermeneutical injustice—the literal lack of words to adequately convey one’s experiences. In this, the marginalized are “prevented from creating concepts [and] terms…to conceptualize and understand their own experiences” and, thus, prevented from understanding their true reality (Fricker 23). For example, the feminist invention of the term “sexual harassment” provided women with the newfound ability to describe the once-obscured workplace reality, consequently enhancing their ability to recognize and, thus, fight that injustice (Saul). In this injustice, the woman’s reality is distorted and effectively silenced by the linguistic inability to communicate the wholeness of her thought. Her reality is different from that of her male counterpart, but the lexicon only accommodates for the experiences of the latter. Again, oppression in language becomes a question of the latter’s relationship to reality. In hermeneutical injustice, language’s evil is its failure to adequately express the experiences of the oppressed, perpetuating oppression through sheer obfuscation. The dominant narrative obscures that of the marginalized, unjustly distorting their experiences through linguistic exclusion and confusion.
Linguistic oppression is underscored by the overarching maleness and whiteness of language. These dominant classes—the white and male—unavoidably entrench the asymmetry of power dynamics of the world into language. In the situation of race, this inequity is ostensibly created to, consciously or unconsciously, “destroy and exploit black people” by imparting the worldview of the dominator which seeks the race’s marginalization (Burgest 37). Accordingly, in sex, oppression is the imposition of the “constrain[ing] male view onto women” (Saul). By constraining and obfuscating reality and its expression, whether by encoding unequal norms, lacking terms for conceptualization, or entrenching stereotypes, the language “mak[es] alternate visions of reality impossible” (Saul). The conclusion is thus reached that the oppression of women by language inextricably involves the blurring of their reality. The male generic encodes her existence out of reality—relegating her to subservient invisibility—while hermeneutical injustice simply provides her with no framework to express the true nature of reality as she experiences it. She is marginalized because her reality is marginalized, forsaken for the prescribed world of the tyrannical male. Similarly, the oppression of Black people involves the shrouding of their true reality by the constraints of the language oppressing class.
Yet, as Cameron notes, the simple acceptance of linguistic oppression as an inevitable byproduct of its role as a representative of reality fails to provide any real avenues for linguistic change (170). It is far too passive to conclude that language is oppressive because it is a mirror for an oppressive reality. Instead, the culpability of language in oppression must be fully defined and delineated. It must be understood that language is not just unequal because it simply reflects an unequal reality, but because it is a mode which “serves to sustain the asymmetrical relation of power that exists between women and men”, acting to maintain the diverge between the oppressed and the oppressor (Cameron 194). One cannot, as Lakoff suggests, simply “change the situation” which engenders linguistic oppression, or one fails to fully realize the culpability of language as a vector for subjugation and marginalization (34). The injustice of language must be understood as not only a sign that society is unjust and in need of change, but as a powerful tool, yielded by the dominant, to enforce the structures which perpetuate their superiority. We must realize its activity, not passivity, in oppression, and fight back against the very structures that allow oppression and injustice to infiltrate our very understanding of the world.
I’m a high school senior passionate about policy and its impact on the world from Colorado. Outside of this, I love to debate, ride my bike, and advocate for legislative change in my community!
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