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SOCIOLINGUISTIC VARIATION OF GENDER STEREOTYPES OF MASCULINITY AND FEMININITY IN THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE CONSCIOUSNESS

M. Garanovich

Abstract

Results of a linguistic associative experiment with 144 Russian informants with given social characteristics on the naming of the words characterizing men and women for a research of a problem of studying of formation of gender stereotypes in language consciousness of native speakers of Russian are presented in the article. The research showed that the gender stereotypes of masculinity and feminity created in language consciousness of Russians depend on a sex, age, education level and specialty of native speakers. The found sociolinguistic variability of gender stereotypes confirmed a hypothesis that the structure of this cognitive formation is mobile. The original author's technique of the analysis and modeling of structures of gender stereotypes is offered. On the one hand, group gender stereotypes have a certain stability as representatives of all social groups of society mark out similar signs of a masculinity and feminity (the core of the stereotype). On the other hand, the ratio of zones of group gender stereotypes shows trends of stereotyping of signs of a masculinity and a feminity in group language consciousness what the discrepancy of stereotypes in various social groups testifies to: the signs important for some social groups canВ’t coincide with the signs significant for other social groups. The gender stereotypes created in language consciousness of various social groups show in general changes in linguocultural Russian community (feminization, change of valuable stereotypes or ideas for social roles of the man and woman, etc.). All these changes are reflected in the use of certain words by native speakers of Russian for characteristic of men and women and also in stereotypic representations and ideas of men and women about each other.

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