Authors
- Markina Lyudmila Doctor of Philology, Associate Professor;
Annotation
The purpose of the article is to describe some gender stereotypes which exist in modern Russian dialects and the factors contributing to them being traditional, reflecting the system of national values, and therefore steady and viable. In the research we rely on the analysis of the content semantics of dialectal abusive designations of women.
The methodological basis of the research is the concept of a gender as a socio-cultural construct, presented in works by a Russian genderologist A.V. Kirilina. Gender stereotypes are understood as culturally and socially caused opinions and presupposition on qualities, attributes and standards of behavior of the representatives of both sexes. Gender stereotyping is noted at all levels of the language, as well as its close connection with the forms of evaluation.
The main part of the paper focuses on the dialectal abusive nominations of women which prove and explain the indisputable for the Russian collective consciousness idea of a woman being less valuable than a man, even doubting her status as a person. These are the abusive nominations indicating limited intellectual abilities of a woman: imbecility, stupidity, slow-wittedness, dullness (толкушка / tolkushka, тулпеха / tulpyokha, тумашка / tukmashka, etc.); her natural negative traits: tendency to gossip (калитотиха / kalitotikha, лепетуха / lepetukha, любопытница / lyubopytnitsa, lyapalka / ляпалка, etc.), peevishness, cantankerousness, scandalousness (мельчиха / melchikha, мерлушка / merlushka, etc.), tendency to idle talk: (толкушка / tolkushka, a турурушка / tururushka, чикалка / chikalka, etc.), those are the traits that exclude a woman from all fields of activity, except housekeeping and childbirth. The abusive nominations in this case are means of punishment for bearers of those traits which do not correspond to the serving nature of female's work: sluggishness (трекша / treksha, рахля / rakhlya, etc.), slackness (разлемзя / razlemzya, тюхня / tyukhnya, etc.), laziness (околотница / okolotnitsa, клушка / klushka, легостайка / legostayka, etc.), incompetent (акуля / akulya, варакуша / varakusha, гатила / gatila, etc.), sloppy, careless (простыня / prostynya, простодыра / prostodyra, раздаваха / razdavakha, растащиха / rastashchikha).
The author comes to a conclusion that the dialectal abusive nominations serve patriarchal gender stereotypic ideas of a woman and her status and specifics of national and cultural consciousness of carriers of a dialect, which are in the mediated way of reflection of valuable reference points have strong roots in national public consciousness that promote their continuous reproduction.