Gender in traditional culture through a dictionary

The article is concerned with a topical anthropocentric scientific trend - gender linguistics, which studies the role of gender and gender stereotypes in language and speech. The interdisciplinary character of the branch involves the scientific interpretation of language material in terms of data explication in history and culture of a respective subethnos. Accordingly, a system of meaningful concepts for a particular society, its transformation and development can be construed through description of gender characteristics in the dialect. In a language, gender characteristics and stereotypes are displayed with the highest distinctiveness at the lexico-phraseological level. As a lexicographical source reflecting the vocabulary of particular dialect we selected the "Vershiniskiy dictionary" composed by the Tomsk dialectological school. The choice is determined by the subject of lexicography - a dialect of Vershinino village, one of the typical old-time Siberian dialects. The comprehensiveness of the material gathered is ensured by lengthy studying of the dictionary and its genre being unabridged, explanatory and filled not only with dialectic, but common Russian vocabulary and phraseology. On the basis of feminine characteristics representation, the article analyzes the means of constructing gender and gender stereotypes formed in a traditional culture and caused by the social and cultural changes of the 20th century. Analysis of lexico-phraseological units found in the lexicographical source revealed that gender-marked vocabulary is constituted by words referring to a person by sex assignment, appearance, character, social role and kind of activity. The first group of gender-marked vocabulary is linked to a general denomination of a person by sex assignment. Depending on the information contained in a lexeme two categories are identifiable: general denomination of a woman irrespective of any status and denomination subject to her matrimonial status. The second group includes words describing the appearance and character of a person. It was discovered that the overwhelming majority of lexemes characterizing men and women are gender-symmetrical and their use depends on context. The third group of gender-marked vocabulary comprises words characterizing a woman in terms of her social condition -family status, job and position. Language transformation connected with changes in family institution, status of women, values and standards in men-women relationship are noted as well. In this way description of dialectic gender-marked lexical units allows the reconstruction of fragments of a dialectic worldview and trace transformation caused by social and cultural changes.

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