Gender-Specific Features in the Speech of Russian Germans of Kirov Region

Abstract

The article will be of interest to researchers involved in studying the characteristics of male and female speech since it examines gender differences in the speech of Russian Germans living in the territory of the Kirov region. The relevance of this study is enhanced by the sociolinguistic significance of island dialectology, associated with studying speech behavior of a German ethnic community that exists in isolation from the parent ethnic group. The study seeks to analyze gender differences in the speech of Russian Germans living in the Kirov region which add to other socio-demographic factors that affect the speech behavior of Russian Germans in the region. The authors discuss the impact of gender on the linguistic competence of the older generation of Russian Germans in the Kirov region as exemplified by the analyzed stories of eleven respondents, Russian Germans of the first, older subgroup (10 women and 9 men aged 70 to 95 years) on the topic “Deportation of Volga and Ukraine Germans into the Kirov Region.” By using direct observation, audio speech recording as well as content and functional analysis of male and female speech, it was demonstrated that the speech of each gender group was characterized by specific linguistic and extra-linguistic features. For instance, one characteristic difference between male and female communication was the ability of the women to quickly switch from one topic to another. In terms of linguistic characteristics of men’s and women’s speech, there were clear differences in the grammatical structure of sentences, while extra-linguistic features included psychological differences in speech characteristics typical of a particular gender group, different communication styles as well as different goals that men and women seemed to pursue when entering into a conversation. However, such differences cannot be considered to be essential characteristics of speech of all women or all men: in our opinion, it would be more correct to class them as certain gender features of male and female speech.