Dziewczyna w typie Kendall Jenner. Antroponimy żeńskie w prasie „kobiecej” na tle koncepcji genderowych

Abstract

This article aims to present several gender theories related to linguistics which could be useful for contemporary onomastics. The author would also like to demonstrate their applicability (especially the theory by R. Connell) in particular onomastic and textological analyses.In the first part of the article, the author explains that there are numerous ways to define gen¬der within the discipline of gender studies. The author focuses on constructivist and performative approaches, especially on those which understand gender as a discursive and normative category. In the second part, the author presents four gender theories by: J. Butler, R. Connell, J. Scott, and by French feminists (J. Kristeva, H. Cixous), paying attention to their methodological value: un¬derstanding gender as a linguistic/performative/semiotic/symbolic/discursive category, as a group of textual practices (games) existing in the dominant culture, and the maintenance or defiance of gender. All of those notions can be related to different groups of onyms and their associated com-municative practices. In the third part, the author presents the directions of research conducted in post-1945 Polish anthroponomastics in the field of feminine names (she is particularly interested in lexical, systemic, and contextual (social, historical etc.) mechanisms.In the empirical section, the author formulates her most important assumption concerning re¬search of gender onomastics in the media (Polish women’s magazines): femininities are constructs, primarily of a normative, model-creating function, they produce hierarchy and difference; proper names are important “notional nodes” in those constructs. The analysis claims that there are at least three different femininities: dominant (celebrity), banal (anonymous) and defiant (rebellious). Female proper names are an important part of each construct as their arrangement (name and sur¬name, name alone, diminutive of the name or culturally-loaded name), along with the appropriate description of their bearers, can give an impression of the popularity and familiarity of certain people and of their high social status or of their anonymity, closeness or unreality.