Is a doctor a (wo)man? Some remarks on sexist language use in English and Greek

In the present paper I discuss the forms of language sexism which appear in English and Greek placing emphasis on professional nominal forms. More specifically, the focus of the paper is on (a) speakers’ attitudes regarding the status of sexism in the society and its reflection on language and (b) the differences between languages with different forms of gender morphological marking, i.e. English and Greek, respectively. I will argue that sexism is a gradient notion, it is more evident in languages with gender discrimination and it seems to be a topic that needs to be incorporated on language teaching.