In our article questions, Professor Burke asked us if we agreed with Amy Sheldon and her thesis statement that the English language "reflects sexist, male-centered attitudes that perpetuate the trivialization, marginalization, and invisibility of female experience." At first, I did not completely agree with this statement because I saw more evidence of this in other languages like Spanish and French, but after contemplating the exact nature of her argument, I have to agree with Sheldon.
Unlike French and Spanish, where the marginalization is apparent in the differentiated endings of some words to coincide with the properties of masculinity and femininity, the English language has us believe that there is no gender value placed on certain words. But, just as Sheldon's daughters example shows, the dominance of masculinity in language overshadows the potential power of femininity.
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