This research is funded by the Science Committee of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Grant No. AP09259233).
Phraseologism as an independent phenomenon has been studied since the end of the twentieth century, when there was an urgent need for the development of intercultural communication. The desire to understand and be understood by representatives of other linguistic cultures has given rise to a whole stream of new directions studying the relationship of language, culture and thinking. One of the important issues of the linguistic representation of a person’s mentality is the question of gender. Phraseologism as one of the linguistic ways of constructing speech allows us to study the problem of masculinity and femininity in depth, as well as to compare the changes that have occurred in the language and how they have affected modern gender identity.
At the present stage of the development of the anthropocentric paradigm, gender is one of the markers of society, which not only determines a person’s position in society, but also influences the formation of this status. Different linguocultures represent gender in terms of their culture and their worldview. Such ideas are reflected in the language system and help to trace the formation of society, culture, a person and his place in society. From the point of view of language, it is a storehouse of information about humanity. The comparison of the language systems of several languages that are not related, differing in value-semantic dominants allows us to consider gender and gender identity and determine a person’s place in his society and in the world space [1,1136]. A special value in gender studies is the study of the speech behavior of men and women: the use of certain vocabulary, phraseological phrases, syntactic constructions in certain situations and with different representatives of the sexes, with different age groups, depending on the status of a person and his position in society.
Over the past decades, scientists around the world have been engaged in gender studies, over a thousand works have been written in an interdisciplinary direction in an attempt to find key factors in the development and formation of modern gender identity. All these changes could not but affect the language, culture and thinking of a person. Language, as a storehouse of the people, reflects the entire epoch of the formation of humanity and stores code information about people, life, mentality and history. The spoken and written word is particular value to linguists.
Folk art, folklore, songs, literary works, films contain information about people, gender and the reasons for the formation of certain foundations in society. Taking into account modern digitalization, many scientists have turned their attention to social networks, blogs, electronic resources, which daily become a source of new vocabulary, new grammar and a new format of communication. For example, in the work of Beisembayeva A.U. and Issina G.I. “Sociolinguistic features of gender identity transformations: empirical research” conducted an associative experiment among men and women with different social statuses, professions and age [2, 2]. The authors highlight the features of gender identity that have formed in the understanding of people and how gender identity is changing under the influence of society and new opportunities.
Linguistic ways of representing gender identity are very diverse: the use of a large number of punctuation marks, the use of emoticons both in writing and in life, the use of abbreviated vocabulary and simplification of grammatical constructions, as well as the replenishment of the language with new expressions, phraseological units, and so on. Moreover, new phraseological units have become so much part of modern speech that most people do not even suspect how often they are used. Phraseological units of the new generation differ from the generally accepted ones, do not always have a deep lexical meaning, and are brief, harsh and sometimes rude.
As a material for the study of gender concepts, we used phraseological units in Russian and English, which, as we believe, are informative material for the interpretation of the concepts of “gender” and “gender identity”.
The founders of phraseology as a scientific direction are rightfully such scientists as Kunin A.V., Vereshchagin V.V., M.A. Leonidov, Goethe I.V. and many others. Researchers were actively engaged in the methodology of phraseology, identified and developed interdisciplinary links with such sciences as philosophy, psychology and others. V.V. Vinogradov, V.N. Telia and others actively developed the system of functioning of phraseological units, methods of their research, areas of phraseology, but taking into account the development of the language and changes in its system, it is impossible to give a clear definition of the concept of phraseological unit and outline the boundaries of its study.
In recent decades, young scientists have also been paying attention to the study of the phenomenon of gender identity and its connection with language. Tairova F.F. in her work “The concept of a phraseological unit” leads us to pay attention to such research criteria as the common use of phraseology, the constancy of grammatical form, semantic integrity and lexical meaning [3, 455]. Sokolova A.A. notes that in the gender aspect, phraseology helps to interpret the role of men and women, to identify gender stereotypes, that is, the habitual expectations of ways of social behavior developed by society and personal requirements in accordance with the biological sex [4, 38].
In the course of the study, we used methods of continuous sampling, methods of observation, generalization and interpretation of the results on the materials of folklore, modern works of literary genre and mass media. A wide range of research allows us to identify the most commonly used phraseological units used in relation to a person in modern society.
The concepts of “masculinity” and “femininity” reveal the relationship between people, their desire for interaction, cooperation and further development of modern society. The close attention of researchers to the problem of “man-woman”, the desire for stereotyping has bypassed the fact that in our society there are the same markers of research as “man-man”, “woman-woman” from the point of view of gender relations, which requires additional study by linguists.
The authors analyzed 124 phraseological turns: 73 of which belong to Russian linguoculture and 51 to English. Phraseological units not only reveal the national picture of the world, but strive to give a description and a name to everything around. Many works are devoted not only to gender, but also to national identity. According to Vakhedi N.G., a set of studies related to history, religion, traditions, language, and thinking can reveal the inner potential of modern gender identity [5, 28].
The analysis revealed that representatives of English and Russian cultures often use proper names in speech, which are known to a wide range of people and give a qualitative characteristic of a person. For example:
- in Russian linguoculture, “Лиса Патрикеевна” (a cunning woman), “Баба-Яга” (an evil woman), “Кощей” (a thin man), “Иванушка-дурачок” (a fool guy) and others are known;
- in English linguoculture, the most commonly used lexemes are “honest Abe” (honest), “big Bertha” (fat woman), “Simple Simon” (simpleton), “a proper Charley” (fool).
It is worth noting that the negative assessment of female characters is permanent, and the gender difference of the masculine gender is the fact that even despite his silliness, Ivanushka is not a “fool” at all, but at the end of the fairy tale remains with a beautiful maiden, in a castle and with money. Modern characters differ somewhat in their semantic characteristics. For example, Sid is a stupid, narrow–minded person whose assessment does not change and retains its negative coloring. Everyone’s favorite Peter Pan is a representative of the male sex, who continues to fly in the clouds and imagine miracles and adventures. A character far from reality who lives one day and does not care about the future.
Phraseological units of different cultures have their own uniqueness, which consists in the use of such phrases that may be incomprehensible to representatives of another culture. For example, in Russian there are such expressions as “ваш покорный слуга”, “кукушка”, and in English it is the Virgin Queen, square John, Sister Ann.
The representations of English and Russian cultures regarding male and female images may differ and cause different associations, not identical. In this regard, Yesemuratova G.A. the following categories of phraseological units:
1. Phraseological units reflecting gender characteristics such as appearance and character. For example, in Russian, старый хрыч, старая карга, мальчик на побегушках; in English, May Queen, Devil, admiral of the red;
2. Phraseological units similar in semantics in a number of languages, but differing in their imagery. For example, “синий чулок” in Russian culture speaks of a girl deprived of charm and having a love of science. In English culture, blue stocking also carries a negative connotation, since, according to society, only men should be engaged in science [6, 134].
The language preserves the entire cultural heritage of the people with its positive and negative assessments of everything that exists: man, society, the world as a whole. In the course of the study, we noted that in Russian linguoculture, a negative assessment of the female image prevails. A man is gender superior to a woman, which is perceived by society as the truth. Stereotypes that have developed since ancient times sometimes do not allow women’s potential to unfold, they are condemned by elders, misunderstood by society and foundations. Such, in our opinion, typical phraseological units as “женская логика”, “бабская доля”, “у бабы волос длинный, а ум короткий” and others have created a stereotypical model according to which modern women have to make more efforts and more work to prove their equality in professional, household and social spheres. If successful, a woman is endowed with such abilities as “мужской ум”, “деловая хватка”, meaning that all the good in a woman is from a man (father, grandfather, husband, and so on). From the point of view of the representation of the male image, we observe the complete opposite.
In English linguoculture, the image of a man has both a positive and a negative side. On the one hand, a man is a gallant, strong, brave person (the man of the hour, the man of destiny, play the man, great lion). On the other hand, a man has negative traits and a tendency to robbery, hooliganism, games and drunkenness (a gentleman of fortune, a man about town). It is obvious that these phraseological units have developed historically, since English society has sharply differentiated by class, status, wealth and standard of living. Rich people, gentlemen were distinguished by their nobility, bravery, desire to serve the king and the church, which could not but leave an imprint on the nobility and ideas about it. People didn’t care about a person’s character, his habits, but only status, power and money. Any nobleman is by definition only positive. In turn, people of the lower class were characterized, as a rule, by negative qualities.
Nowadays, when the boundaries between rich and poor have been erased to a certain extent, when material goods have ceased to be one of the main values of life, new opportunities and conditions for the formation and development of personality have appeared. But, nevertheless, preference is subconsciously given to male representatives. Although in our opinion the gender picture is gradually changing. Taking into account the feminist movements, the rise of the cult of the mother, the keeper of the hearth, the growth of the social significance of business, a situation may arise that over time gender identity will not be so polar in its opposition.
Understanding and acceptance of something bad and good, negative and positive also changes under the influence of significant social circumstances occurring in the world and factors affecting the transformation of gender consciousness. For example, the lexeme “devil”, which previously had a pronounced negative assessment, does not always have negative features in the modern film industry and in the literery world. The modern image of the devil is a man with an extraordinary mind, logic, cunning, charm and appearance. Such duality is also characteristic of the female image: the ability to combine the features of femininity, beautiful and spiritualizing goes hand in hand with the images of envy, guile, malice, cunning and so on.
Modern gender identity breaks the foundations, creates new rules and seeks to erase the boundaries between female and male, bad and good. Transsexuals, feminists, cultural peculiarities of different peoples mixing in connection with the possibility of intercultural interaction between people around the world are gradually destroying ideas about binary, masculinity and femininity.
If we turn to modern phraseological units, it can be noted that they do not belong to any particular sex, that is, they are not gender-colored. For example, голубая кровь, важная птица, седьмая вода на киселе and others. It is worth noting that in the professional sphere, especially in European countries, people try not to focus on the gender identity of a person. A platform is being created in society where every person with any identity, sex, age and preferences can occupy their niche regardless of sex. Gender inequality is still evident in Asian countries, but linguists note changes in gender identity from the point of view of society, consciousness and language from year to year. In this case, phraseology itself as a linguistic phenomenon plays a huge role in understanding masculine and feminine.
The image of a woman in English linguoculture is somewhat different from the Russian image. If it is common for the British to address a woman – lady, then to the Russian – баба. In English culture there are more positive phraseological units about a woman than in Russian. For example, beauty queen, the queen of love, the queen of glory, the first lady and others.
Thus, as we can judge from the examples given, phraseological units in the gender aspect preserve the cultural and verbal memory of the people about different conceptual concepts. The image of a woman is characterized by a duality of ideas related to the historical conditions of the development of society, with its national characteristics, which is reflected in the semantics of a significant number of gender phraseological units. For example, in the current study, out of 124 phraseological units, 84 linguistic units are devoted to the description of the female image and 40 to the image of men. As the material shows, at the present stage of language development, ideas about the boundaries between masculine and feminine, ideas about masculinity and femininity in society and culture are no longer so straightforward and unambiguous. We are witnessing serious transformational processes in modern society, which could not but affect gender consciousness and language consciousness as well. New phraseological units, characterized by stylistic violations, characterized by asexuality and ambiguous semantic comprehension, make their own changes in the formation of identity in the global master staff.
Not only female images, but also male images undergo significant changes, turning from a strong and dominant personality into an ordinary person with his vices, weaknesses and prejudices. It is obvious that the negative and positive assessment have also begun to change their polarity. And what was previously evil becomes neutral, and sometimes even positive. Conversely, the image of strong male gods loses its appeal, giving the stronger sex a certain ordinariness and mediocrity. Literary images such as Sid, the stupid Winnie-the-Pooh bear and others expose the problems of a modern man who is unable to come to terms with the development of society in favor of the formation of the weaker sex. Female identity, endowed with a negative assessment, seeks to acquire positive traits, proving its equality, strength and capabilities. Gender identity loses its masculinity or femininity traits, but represents a person capable of resisting the challenges of this world, being in constant training, developing culturally, spiritually and physically.