What is the importance of marked and unmarked terms?

Marked and unmarked terms are very useful when analysing the representation of gender in texts as words which are marked are those which are ascribed less prestige than the standard form of a word. Gender inequality can be examined from a sociological view, however, the connotations of words can illustrate this inequality and double-standard between men and women. An example of this is the morphological change of a suffix in order to change the gender of a word from male to female. Terms such as ‘master’, ‘God’ and ‘lad’ which change to ‘mistress’, ‘Goddess’ and ‘Ladette’. Whilst the male terms all have positive connotations, ‘mistress’ has the connotations of secret affair and promiscuity, and ‘ladette’ has the connotations of boisterous, promiscuous and masculine, all of which are negative. Therefore, male terms with the same denotation as that of their equivalent female terms, have very different connotations.  The morphological change of the added bound morpheme suffixes ‘-ess’ and ‘-ette’ changes the words to female. The etymology of these suffixes make the terms which use these derogatory and sexist. The etymology of ‘-ette’ involves the denotation of relatively less in value. The suffix ‘-ess’ tends to be regarded as sexist and as such is starting to fall into disuse; a single, gender-neutral term is preferred by some even though it is a less specific term. Another example of marked and unmarked terms which are important in analysis are those regarding promiscuity in men and women. Those referring to men are typically positive in connotation and denotation whereas those referring to women are almost all negative. There are some terms which are, by denotation, gender neutral, however, their connotations have made them female. In recent years we have begun adding a male mark on these gender neutral terms in order to specify them as male; for example, ‘male-slut’ and ‘man-whore’. This illustrates the social opinions of women who are promiscuous as negative whilst it is irregular for a man who has a lot of sex to be viewed negatively, and in turn requires a specific free morpheme to prove them as male to make a point of them being male. Similarly a ‘lad’ is a man who has a lot of sex and is seen positively whilst a ‘ladette’ is a woman who does the same however is viewed very negatively. All of these methods, and more, help to analyse the representation of gender in texts as they show the sociological opinions of the context of any given text. Using marked terms can give a specific tone and connotation of disapproval. They imply negativity and are derogatory towards women. Even when they are used towards men, the terms are still derogative for women. Using gender neutral terms with female pronouns is not sexist and is a more politically correct way to refer to women, rather than using marked terms.