Abstract:

Language, as a carrier of culture, can reflect specific social and cultural phenomena. By the aid of corpus and chronological research means, we found the use of “gender nouns” is gradually decreasing, the use of their neutral nouns, on the other hand, is increasing. This article attempts to analyze the increasing use of neutral nouns. Our conclusions are as the following: (1) under feminist movement in the latter of the 20th century, feminists neutralize the language, which is widely accepted by the whole society for the heightening gender equality awareness; (2) feminist translators encourage using neutral nouns, which pushes the use of them.

Key words: neutral nouns, corpus, chronological, gender equality