Aspects of Linguistic Sexism in Personal Deixis of Hindi

Abstract

Personal deixis refers to the usage of pronouns and other words that indicate the person(s) involved in a conversation or situation. In Hindi, there are different forms of personal deixis based on gender. The use of language that reinforces gender stereotypes and perpetuates gender discrimination is linguistic sexism, and has two folds – overt and covert sexism. Linguistic sexism can manifest in various forms, such as using masculine pronouns as the default, genderspecific job titles, and words suggesting women are inferior to men. Covert sexism refers to subtle forms of discrimination against women that are often normalized and accepted in society whereas overt sexism is the contrary to it. This research aims at identifying the way how honorifics, kingship terms, and job titles in Hindi reflect and reinforce gender roles, stereotypes, and societal attitudes toward gender through the content analysis of discourses of the Hindi novel Suhag Ke Nupur by Amritlal Nagar based on the qualitative inductive research approach with the purpose of promoting the essentiality of genderneutral language which avoids any implication of social gender for the inclusivity since this type of language can contribute to a culture that marginalizes and excludes individuals based on their gender identity. The results indicate that the use of gender- neutral pronouns, honorifics in the form of default masculine plural in the context of bi-gender groups and gender specific job titles, names, nick names to overtly exaggerate either one of gender by marginalizing the other gender.