Semantics Of Gender Research Articles

The semantics of gender, politics, and religion in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s This Mournable Body

Zimbabwean literature produced after the attainment of independence has been predominantly engrossed with thematisation of the postcolonial subaltern subjects’ existential conditions, enunciated together with gender politics, religion and socio-economic environment that frame politics of difference, and sites of suffering or resistance. These tropes remain absorbing and critical even in contemporary female-authored novels that also engage with a deeply fractured modern-day Zimbabwe. Tsitsi Dangarembga’s novel, This Mournable Body, offers important site to debate the enduring concerns of gender inequalities, politics, and religion. A stylistic approach is adopted to identify the semiotic construction of the text and discuss the different styles that are deployed to foreground central tropes in the novel. The adoption of stylistics as an underlying conceptual model locates this current study in the interdisciplinary research which brings together gender, applied linguistics, poetics, politics, and religion, in order to provoke new ways of reading the dialogic and polyphonic elements of the text. The study contends that the politics of difference is an unsettling subject that profoundly impacts on gender relations and religio-political practices in a milieu where precarity is a major defining feature of the subaltern sections comprising women and the marginalised poor. Thus, the novel’s title figuratively foregrounds the (un)mournable bodies of the people, who are both dehumanised and heavily burdened by surviving at the margin.Contribution: Tsitsi Dangarembga’s novel, This Mournable Body demonstrates a deep concern with the plight of the subaltern people in a gendered society and how their conditions of the Othered bodies are further amplified by both religion and politics in present-day Zimbabwe. Thus the study contributes to the mounting discourses about politics of fragmentation and binary practices, and the ensuing agony suffered by the sidelined persons. The adopted stylistic reading of the focus novel underscores the interdisciplinary urgency to literary interpretative process.

Специфика гендерного аспекта в словообразовательных гнездах

Much has been said and written about the gender aspect in linguistics. But there are still open questions concerning the specifics of the gender factor in word-forming nests. Therefore, we see the purpose of our research in the need to more accurately determine the presence and uniqueness of the semantic category of gender in the families of words with ‘young — old’ and their equivalents in the English and German languages. The article reveals various ways of expressing the meaning of the female and male genders, clarifies the problem of studying the gender aspect, and actualizes attention to the peculiarity of the gender factor in families of words. The analysis is based on three gender markers: morphological, lexical, and thematic. Each of these markers is considered on the example of lexical units identified by gender in the named word-forming nests. The morphological gender marker made it possible to identify gender-oriented lexemes formed by such methods of word production as conversion, suffix derivation, and word composition. The lexical marker determined the presence of five groups of words of different gender semantics. And, finally, using a thematic marker, gender formations associated with stereotypically ‘male’ and ‘female’ topics that take place in a certain period of development of society and the country as a whole were identified. Thus, as a result, it was proved that the ways of expressing semantic gender in the families of words under consideration are different and are due to both morphological and extra-linguistic reasons related to the specifics of the language picture of the world.

Гендерні сопозиції, що відносяться до осіб, в ліриці Марлени Рахліної

The analysis of grammatical units, the basis of which is the category of gender of nouns is given. These units denote living beings that have gender correlates. The article examines the functioning of gender correlates referred to persons based on the lyric works by Marlena Rakhlina. The object of analysis is morphological categories in Rakhlina’s poetry. The subject of the research is gender juxtapositions related to persons in poems by Rakhlina. The poetic potential of linguistic units in literary functioning is revealed by means of the functional method; the distributive method made it possible to consider morphological units in a poetic text based on contextual correlation and compatibility; with the help of context-interpretation analysis morphological ways of implementing the author's intention to create poetic meaning are characterized. Among the nouns referred to living beings in the lyrics by Rakhlina gender correlates that denote persons are presented. Four different types of such gender correlates have been revealed. Gender semantics is realized in pairs of one-root personal substantives with derivational suffixes of feminine gender; in gender correlates, systemically reflecting family relationships; in opposites that denote various age groups; in oppositional pairs, expressed in different parts of speech. The types of gender juxtapositions identified in the poems by Rakhlina can be expressed in different parts of speech and reflect the meanings of not only unification in a married couple or a pair of lovers, but also unification along the same type of people. Such consolidation quite often indicates family relationships between the lyric character of the poem and her children, which go through different age phases. The materials of this article can be used in classes on grammar and stylistics of the Russian language.

Gender Semantics of the Forest in the Prose of Traditionalist Writers of the 1960s–1970s

This article studies the specific behaviour of characters in the forest space within the framework of the gender aspect. The study demonstrates that in the works of traditionalist writers of the 1960s and 1970s, as one of the iconic loci of the rural world, traditionally preserving the semantics of the unknown, “sacred” space, the forest reveals a characteristic influence on the behavior of the characters. The article provides examples that suggest that the gender of characters plays a significant role in this regard. It is proved that the objects of the most active influence of the forest are mainly male characters, whose inner space undergoes significant changes as a result, exposing the unconscious, “natural” drive of the characters. Being in the forest space, representatives of the stronger sex somehow strive for a maximum fusion with the environment, which is realised either in harmonious coexistence with nature and preservation of their own identity or in a kind of “wildness” of the characters. In this case, both options are due to the distancing of the characters from society, which is manifested to a greater or lesser extent. It is also noted that the specific behaviour of men in the forest space acquires a symbolic meaning as a result of comparison with the peculiarities of perception of the forest by female characters. Once in the forest, the heroines of the studied works do not succumb to the influence of space, preserving their inner space. Also, without crossing the line of the unconscious, women simultaneously become carriers of the cultural principle in the wild natural locus. Thus, the analysis of traditionalist prose makes it possible to find several striking examples of individual perception of the forest space by representatives of each gender.

Репрезентация гендера в лексической системе башкирского языка

Introduction. The Bashkir language ― like other Turkic languages ― contains no category of grammatical gender explicitly associated with the gender of animate nouns. There are only lexical means of gender designation. Goals. In this regard, the article attempts to study features of the lexical means employed to represent sex (gender) in the Bashkir language. Materials and Methods. The insight into specifics of gender in the Bashkir language includes the use of certain research methods, such as the method of continuous sampling, the comparative one, and that of statistical analysis. Results. The linguistic analysis reveals that the meaning of sex (gender) in the Bashkir language is manifested by lexical-semantic (gender-marked lexemes, with qualifier words) and derivational means. Semantics of male and female gender in Bashkir discourse is to be traced in such lexical and semantic groups as terms of kinship, family relations, names of professions, anthroponyms. Basically, gender in the Bashkir language is represented by separate multi-root lexemes. However, there are also some kinship terms and anthroponyms denoting females which are derived from masculine names. The same phenomenon is observed in borrowed names of professions when a female specialty term derives from a masculine form with the aid of the affix -ә. In the original vocabulary, there is no gender differentiation according to professional affiliation. Here, to concretize a person’s gender qualifier words that contain gender semantics ― qatyn ‘woman’, ir ‘man’, apaj ‘sister, aunt’, qyδ ‘girl’, and others ― are used. The study emphasizes there are obvious gender asymmetries in the Bashkir language since resulting from the prevalence of words to express the concepts ‘man’ and ‘masculine’, and the lack of lexemes representing the concepts ‘woman’ and ‘feminine’. This attests to androcentricity of the Bashkir language.

COMPARATIVE IDIOMS OF THE CONCEPTUAL FIELD «HUMAN» IN LANGUAGE AND BEYOND

The term “gender”, its relations to natural gender, and the question of arbitrariness of gender as a linguistic category and related issues have been discussed since Aristotle. Idiomatic units by definition are composed of a sequence of words whose meaning is different from their literal interpretation and their processing may involve further steps, such as realizing that the meaning of the phrases is not literal and associating the words with their figurative meanings. Across the languages of the world, gender systems vary widely which differ in the number of classes, in the underlying assignment rules, and how and where gender is marked. There must be 5 foci of an objective description of idioms: the figurative meaning, the contextual situation, the functions, the type, the structure. In the present paper the gender component and the interaction of its variants – masculine and feminine in the structure of the comparative idioms are of the major significance. The lingual-cultural approache and methods of cognitive linguistics to gender studies can clarify gender semantics of comparative idioms in order to give a model representa- tion of English gender-marked idioms, and explore gender lingval-cultural makers in the idiom corpus. A special place in the study of linguistic representation of gender is occupied by idiomatic units which can express established gender stereotypes in language, evaluative priorities of traits, characteristics of men and women, their social roles and relationships between them. There is an opinion that gender is a “socially and culturally conditioned phenomenon”and it is “one of the parameters of the human personality, which includes a biological entity, as well as a culturally determined mental construct, and “social gender in contrast to biological revealed in the process of social, cultural and linguistic practice. Comparative idioms as stereotypes contain people’s social experience -- their use facilitates and simplifies communication, saving the language efforts of interloc- utors. Baider stresses that stereotypes of thought highlight beliefs, attitudes and prejudices which prevail in a given community.

ВНУТРЕННЯЯ ФОРМА НОМИНАЦИЙ ДОМОВЫХ ЖЕНСКОГО ПОЛА В РУССКИХ НАРОДНЫХ ГОВОРАХ

Dialect nominations of female boggarts in different regions of Russia were investigated. In the Russian dialect worldview, female boggarts are very important. However, little has been known about them, because boggarts are nowadays commonly associated with mythological creatures of the male gender. As a result of the study, the semantic portrait of a female boggart was made using a specific set of semes revealed by the analysis of the internal forms of lexical units (according to W. von Humboldt, A.A. Potebnya, and N.F. Alefirenko). The internal form of the word is seen as the closest etymological meaning of the word and its denotation. Recordings of Russian dialect speakers were carried out with the help of the continuous sampling method. The following three most interesting lexical-semantic groups of names of female boggarts in terms of motivation were considered: place of living, typical actions and behavior, appearance (color, hair, etc.). Special attention was paid to national gender stereotypification of the studied dialect expressions (A.V. Kirilina, L.V. Markina). A number of examples were provided to demonstrate non-typical national ideas about boggarts with regard to the gender semantics of female boggart nominations.

Категория рода русских существительных в гендерном аспекте: парадигматический и синтагматический потенциал

This article proposes a gender classification of Russian declinable nouns. The following aspects are discussed:1. The way in which nouns are connected with gender semantics: factually, when the gender stem is part of their lexical meaning structure, or potentially;2. the level at which the semantics is rendered: the level of the word (within the lexeme stem or the entire word form) or the level of the syntagma;3. the semantic nature: the meaning of the biological or the symbolic gender that is present in the anthropomorphic reflection of the world.

The semantics of gender in Mayali: Partially parallel systems and formal implementation

Abstract: Mayali has four genders and five morphological classes, with formal identity between the gender prefixes and four of the morphological class prefixes. Gender and morphological class are assigned according to different but largely overlapping semantic principles. We analyze these partially overlapping systems within the network morphology framework; an implemented model demonstrates that the analysis gives the correct forms for the majority of nouns in a basic lexicon, and further extends to understanding assignment in the avoidance register. Our account depends on recognizing two different types of default: normal case default, the expected outcome in a given domain, and exceptional case default, the last resort short of full lexical specification.