Zaitseva S.V.
Supervisor
- Narmukhametova N.M.
Eurasian
National University named after L.N. Gumilev
Gender
factor in English, Russian and Kazakh proverbs and sayings.
Nowadays we can
observe booming growth of researches devoted to studying gender aspects in
language and speech. Gender linguistics is one of the perspective directions
which investigated language and its units containing gender components.
Most of the
people have misconception that the terms “gender” and “sex” both convey the
same meaning. However, these two terms are quite separate from each other. Sex
is a term that is used to describe the difference between male and female in
biological respect. Sex refers to biological differences;
chromosomes, hormonal profiles, internal and external sex organs. Gender is
something, which is not at all depended on biological aspects; rather it is the
masculine or feminine characteristic that has been developed as an impact of
the social, cultural norms and affiliations. It is very important to remember that
a person develops this particular behavior due to the society he or she is
living in and this behavior is completely alterable by the will of the person.
Phraseological
fund of any language represent very interesting and factful material for gender
researches as it reflects many aspects of people’s life: history, national
consciousness, morals, values, preferences, relations
and the way of life. It is essential to point out that research on
proverbs has not only been carried out within phraseology, but also in other scholarly branches. Thus in the
field of paremiology (paremia =
proverb), the scholarly field that deals with proverbs, much research has been
conducted over the centuries. Moreover, in comparison to phraseology, paremiology has a far longer tradition. Paremiology mainly deals with
collecting and classifying proverbs as well as tracing the nature and origin of
individual proverbs and investigating their socio-historical significance.
In the history of studying proverbs and sayings there were attempts to
find distinctive features. Proverb is always statement, containing some
specified conclusions. Proverbs are popular wisdom, code of rules of life,
practical philosophy, and historical memory. A saying is a short, clever
expression that usually contains advice or expresses some obvious truth.
Proverbs and sayings represent special interest for researches in the field of
linguistic genderology, as they embody «cultural-national outlook» of every
nation.
Having analyzed
the fund of proverbs and sayings with the gender components in three languages
we revealed the following tendency: the considerable number of paremias is
devoted to women and most of them contain negative connotation of female
representatives.
The common thing in the languages of analyzed cultures is stereotypic
opinion about low mental abilities of a woman. Əйелдің
шашы
ұзын, ақылы
қысқа.
In the English and Russian
languages there are number of equivalents, confirming similarity of such
estimation of a woman: Women are the devil’s
nets, Куда
чёрт
не
поспеет, туда
бабу
пошлёт. The attitude towards woman in Russian and English cultures is
different. In Russia a woman is not considered as a person: Кобыла
не
лошадь, баба
не
человек. As for Englishmen a woman is a secret: Woman is the key to life’s
mystery.
Appearance is not the main thing. It is
not the most important condition for being beautiful. It is much more important
for a woman to be a good mistress, to be kind, careful and quick-witted. Красота приглядится, а щи не прихлебаются. Не
ищи красоты, ищи доброты! Қыз
қылығымен жағады.
The distinctive feature of Kazakh in comparison
with the Russian and English languages is that there are proverbs
characterizing men. All of them convey positive characteristics and they are
about resoluteness, courage, superiority,
straightforwardness: Тура
ағаш
үйге
тірек, тура
жігіт
елге
тірек, Ауыр
жүкті
нар
көтерер, ел
жүгін
ер
көтерер, Батыр жігіт
жол
бастар, ақін
жігіт
той
баста.
According to the result of analysis of three languages it is possible
to make the following conclusion: in the Kazakh linguistic worldview the concepts
"woman" and "man" are presented in their quantitative ratio
more widely than in the English and Russian languages. The greatest number of
proverbs is proverbs reflecting social characteristics. Possible explaining of
the given fact can consist in the fact that in Kazakh culture relationship are
closely supported that is expressed by
nominative density of terms of relationship: brother, daughter-in-law, sister-in-law, brother-in-law,
mother-in-law, father-in-law, son-in-law, parents and etc.
According to the above mentioned research we
observe language androcentrism. It means that the majority of paremias reflect
male point of view and domination of men. The image of women is not always
negative. We can rather say about a tendency, than a negative attitude. But a
certain degree of androcentrism takes place.
Studying gender relations is one of the ways
of understanding of social changes in society. And linguistics and its language
structure are more clearly show the state of consciousness of society.
References:
1)
Wolfgang Mieder. Proverbs are Never out of Season. Popular
Wisdom in the Modern Age. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993
2)
Apperson G.L. English proverbs and
proverbial phrases., Lnd 1969
3) Горошко Е. Пол, гендер,
язык // Женщина. Гендер. Культура. - М., 1999
4) Кирилина А. В. Гендер:
лингвистические аспекты. М., Институт социологии РАН, 1999
5) Даль В.И. Пословицы
русского народа. - М., Высшая школа, 1957
6) Aққозин М. Ө Қазақ
мақал-мәтелдері. –Алматы, 1990 ж. 288 бет.