Figurative modelling of a person's images with regard to gender and culture specificity

The article represents the results of the comparison between gender oppositions of the Russian and English languages in terms of gender. The subject matter of the analysis is gender metaphors. Source domains that are foregrounded in the process of metaphorical modelling act as the key aspect of the analysis. In this paper the author studies whether there are any differences in the source domains used in metaphorical modelling in Russian and English and if the trends are gender specific or not. Another purpose of the study was to identify the correlation of a source domain and a target domain, that is to find out which source domains are predominantly used for metaphorical description of a person's character and behavior, appearance, intellectual ability. The comparison carried out in the study is double: firstly, the comparison of gender marked and gender unmarked metaphors and, secondly, interlingual comparison between two linguocultures - Russian and English. As the main sources of data for metaphor study dictionaries of the Russian and the English languages including online dictionaries were used. The material was obtained by means of continuous sampling method: in the vocabulary of the dictionaries lexical items that have figurative metaphorical meaning naming a person were identified. The total number of gender metaphors identified was 409 and 497 lexemes that characterize a human from the Russian and English dictionaries respectively. The analysis of gender marked and gender unmarked metaphors in both languages showed that the metaphors have much in common with respect to specific source domains used - the core groups of source domains are the same. The differences can be found both in the area of non-productive models and the predominance of metaphorical nominations of women in comparison with those of men in Russian, whereas in English the number of metaphors naming women is equal to that of men. As far as the second objective is concerned, the common trend of the predominance of animal metaphors manifested itself with regard to the total number of metaphors and the most productive group of metaphors that characterize a person in the aspect of their behavior. The analysis showed that it is animals used as source domains that most often characterize the behavior and character of a person in Russian and English - 38 % and 40 % respectively. The comparison of metaphors in the two languages reveals common patterns of figurative modelling of a person and the choice of a definite source domain. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of metaphorical nominations in Russian and English showed that there are no typical features when choosing a source domain. The use of a source domain is not gender-specific. The most significant difference between Russian and English metaphors is that in Russian the number of metaphorical nominations of a woman is five times higher than that of a man. It has been demonstrated that there are only specific differences when it comes to the correlation of definite characteristics and images, which is due to cultural patterns including mythology.

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