A saonuren is &a woman of loose morals,& &a slut,&
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A saonuren is &a woman of loose morals,& &a slut,& while a saolaotou is &a lecher,& &an old wolf.& The two terms, seemingly equivalent, differ from one another in much the same way the English glosses differ from each Farris / GENDER AND G R A M M A R IN CHINESE 295 other in the relative value society places on the unrestrained sexu- ality of men as opposed to women, that is, a loose, immoral woman versus a lecherous old man. Although men's sexuality may the ob- ject of a pejorative term, as in boqinglang, &heartless lover,& such terms for men also refer to their virility and sexual prowess, as in selang, &old wolf.& Thus linguistic asymmetry mirrors cultural values and social mores. Finally, we note the term yaojing (literally, &a supernatural spirit,& a &fox-spirit&), &a woman who bewitches men.&Vivien Ng (1987: 64) points out that the fox-woman is a common super- natural spirit in Chinese folk tales who &is typically extremely beautiful and seductive and loves to prey on unsuspecting young men who are novices in the matter of love and sex.'' She notes that &fox-possession tales are so universally known in China that, in the vernacular speech, seductresses are often referred to as 'fox- spirits' & (Ng, 1987: 64). In Taiwanese society today, the term yao- jing is often used to curse the &other woman.& Because of a sexual double standard, married men in Taiwan who can afford it often have xiao laopo, &little wives,& with whom they usually set up a separate establishment. Or they will at least have a waiyu, &an out- side interest.& & But wives invariably blame the other woman for insinuating herself into the man's affections, and thus this woman is said to bewitch men. WORD ORDER Covert gender in Chinese also operates at the level of syntax. As Shih () points out, normal-that is, unmarked-word order always places lexemes with the semantic feature &+mas- culine& first, &+feminine& second. In other words, there is a semantic hierarchy to nouns that is motivated by underlying meta- physical assumptions about the sexes. Hierarchical ordering of nouns also occurs in Navajo (Witherspoon, 1977), and, I suggest, in all languages. Table 7 is a list of contrast sets and common chen- gyu that refer to gender in Chinese culture and society. The sub- ordinate status of females in Chinese society is apparent from the 296 MODERN CHINA / July 1988 TABLE 7 Covert Gender in Words E n g l i s h gloss C h i n e s e C h a r a c t e r s CONTRAST SETS r a l c a n d f e r n a l e I ~ I )n u h u s b a n d a n d w i f e f u f u f a t k . e r ar.d r r o t k e r f u mu 'K-% ! b r o t l r e r s a n d s i s t e l - s x i o n g d i j i e rnei E%+w4- son:; a n d d a i . g t l t e ~ - tz n u e n d e - e n p h a s i z e ion,,e:: ztrong n a n q i n g n u ( h e a v y man l i g h t womar.) man i s r e s p e c t e d : won,an d e b a s e d n 3 n z u n n u b e i man r L l e s o u t s i d e : wonan r u l e s i n s i d e n a n 7 h u w a i n i z h u n e i %s+[-+s& n a s c u l l n e p r i n c l g l e 1 - ...
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