Abstract Dominance: Linguistic investigation of gender orientation in vernacular Cairene Arabic Heba Nayef Humanities Department, College of Language and Communication, Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport hnayef@gmail.com Abstract Arabic, like many other gendered languages, displays a grammatical and semantic gender bias that led some researchers to describe it as 'androcentric' in nature. Yet, while sexism in modern standard English has been the subject of a lot of academic research work over the past forty years, little attention has been given to linguistic gender bias in Arabic, and none, to the best of my knowledge, to Vernacular Cairene Arabic (VCA). The objective of this paper is to provide a linguistic description of the andocentric nature of VCA both on the grammatical and lexical levels. Through a qualitative approach, the paper shows the heavy male domination characterising Cairene Arabic, as illustrated in the various morphological, lexical and syntactic features. It examines two major types of institutionalised linguistic sexism in VCA: structure- embedded sexism, and ideological and cultural sexism. Key words: linguistic sexism, gender bias, Vernacular Cairene Arabic, sociolinguistics, ideology, feminism 1.Introduction Studying the linguistic behaviour of humankind is like opening a window to various societies – past or present – and even has a glimpse on the future and a way of shaping it. As Mills and Mullany (2011) put it: "Everything we do and think, we do through language – and thus analysis of language can be seen as a clear index of the way individuals negotiate with social forces.” language not only reflects the ideologies, thoughts and beliefs of a society but it also moulds them. It is through language that we learn our prejudices (van Dijk 2006) and transmit the culture to the next generations (Miller & Swift 1976/2000). Though many researchers tend to question the strong Whorfian version of language affecting our thoughts, some recent studies have given evidence to that. Wesserman and Weseley (2009), after conducting three experiments on French, Spanish and English, concluded that languages with grammatical gender promote sexist attitudes. The same conclusion can be found in the study conducted by Abudalbuh (2012) who found that Arabic native speakers learning English as a second language tend to display a 'typically sexist linguistic practice' where men occupy both the unmarked (i.e. normal) position while women are assigned the marked, the different, position. The acts in which we participate constantly reinforce gender, making it appear normal and natural (Butler 1990; Lorber 1994). This study is a linguistic investigation of some sexism features in Vernacular Cairene Arabic (VCA). Through a qualitative analysis, the paper pinpoints some of the most salient features of linguistic sexism in VCA whether structurally embedded or ideologically rooted. 2. Literature Review 1