Eight words that reveal the sexism at the heart of the English language - The Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/27/eight-words-sexism-heart-english-language
Mistress
The female equivalent of "master"
Hussy
"A disreputable woman of improper behaviour"
Madam
The female equivalent of "sir"
Governess
Compared to "Governor" a lady who has particular power over someone
Spinster
A woman beyond usual age for marriage equivalent for bachelor
Courtesan
Female equivalent of "courtier"
Wench
An unmarried woman, a mistress
Tart
A female of immoral character


Thinking about the male equivalents of some of these words throws their sexism into sharp relief. Master for mistress; sir for madam; governor for governess; bachelor for spinster; courtier for courtesan – whereas the male list speaks of power and high status, the female list has a very different set of connotations. These are of either subordinate status or sexual service to men.

New exclamation mark rules – The Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/education/shortcuts/2016/mar/07/new-exclamation-mark-rules-proof-the-government-wants-to-penalise-enthusiasm
New guidelines from the Department for Education suggest that primary school children should only use ‘!’ in sentences starting with ‘what’ or ‘how’.

Language and gender

Dominate a conversation by topic initiation, topic shifts, holding the floor, lack of turn-yielding clues, interrupting and generally speaking more.	More submissive in a conversation and likely to speak less. Unlikely to interrupt, initiate or change topics or attempt to hold the floor.
Use a more informal register through their use of accent, taboo, slang, dialect, sociolect and grammatical variations. Likely to use covert prestige to sustain a masculine identity.	More likely to use overt prestige to help create a feminine identity and succumb to stereotypes on how a ‘lady-like’ woman should talk (more formal lexis and less phonological variations).
More likely to be factual, competitive, direct and detached when speaking while maintaining a need for status.	More likely to be supportive, cooperative, polite, apologetic and emotional when speaking.

Word classes

Content words
A content word is a word that displays meaning (Team, Italy, Dining, Hotel)
Open word classes
Refers to the category of content words, the number of them can expand  (Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs)
Closed word classes
Made up of a finite set of words (prepositions, determiners and conjunctions)
Common noun
Any person, place or thing (student, teacher, college)
Abstract nouns
An abstract noun is a noun that you cannot sense, no physical existence, emotions, ideas (love, power, truth, joy)
Proper noun
The name of a particular person, place or thing (Julie, Mr Smith, London)
Collective noun
Name of a group of people or things all of one type (government, staff, team)
Verbs
An action state or occurrence (be, drive, grow, sing, think, walk)
Adjective
Naming an attribute/description of a noun (sweet, red, big, talented, tidy)
Adverb
How an action is done, modifies the verb, shows relationship to previous sentence (happily, recently, luckily, soon)
Pronoun
Stands in place of a noun (I, me, you, they, them, ours, theirs, this, that)
Prepositions
Links noun to rest of sentence, preposition +verb = phrasal verb (In, on, over, under, along, at, with)
Determiners
Determine the noun ( A dog, my dog, this dog, the dog)
Conjunctions
Connecting clauses (and, if, but, or, because, although)
Auxiliaries
(was, don't, might, do, does, did, have, has, had, am, am, is, was, were)
Modal auxiliaries
Outcome, ability, or permission (must, may, might, can, could, will, would)

Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright: The Top 20 Words in English

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06z2pmp


Summary: