Teacher E. I. Guseynova

Sumy National Agrarian University, Ukraine

Feminist Linguistics: Main Tendencies and Influence on Language Reform

The feminist linguistics or the feminist language criticism appeared in the 60-70^ies of XX century. Its origin was caused by a number of reasons of both extralinguistic and intralinguistic character. A whole series of events can be referred to the first group of reasons, namely the development of “New women’s movement” in the USA and Europe, the growth of feminism popularity, the heyday of postmodernism philosophy and the so-called “cognitive evolution”. Among the linguistic reasons, which contributed to the origin of feminist linguistics one can refer the appearance of new scientific schools in linguistics itself in the 50-60^ies - Psycholinguistics, Quantum Sociolinguistics, Pragmatists, Theory of Communication; the promotion of studies of a human factor and problems of interrelation between language and biosocial characteristics of a person; the change of paradigms in science and the origin of a proper methodological and scientific basis for the development of gender researches in social sciences.

Feminist linguistics is now on the crossroads of gender researches in language and critical linguistics. The representatives of this school consider that their main goal is criticism of patriarchal consciousnesses in language and the language reform aimed at elimination of the defective representation of the woman image in language and sexist asymmetries, existing in language and speech.

At the present moment two main tendencies can be distinguished in the feminist linguistics. The first one investigates discrimination of the woman’s image in the language picture of the world. Its representatives believe that language fixes a male vision of the world, "imposing" male values and estimations. It follows from the fact that almost all languages, functioning in our patriarchal society, are "male". And the image of a woman, reflected in language, is supplied with negative connotations and characteristics. Here we can refer the works that analyze mechanisms of inclusiveness in the grammatical masculine gender: the identification in language happens by the masculine gender if the matter concerns the representatives of both sexes. Thus, the lexicon of language became one of the central objects of these researches, since it is the lexicon that reflects the negative definitions concerning women. The researches revealed the following: coordination at a syntactic level occurs by the form of the grammatical gender of the corresponding part of speech, instead of the real reviewer of a sex; the concepts / "person" / and / "man" / are identified, and in a number of European languages they are simply interchangeable; female forms usually are derivatives from male ones. Besides, lexical means describing women and their features have predominantly negative connotations. According to this approach, language also fixes gender roles distribution that becomes out-of-date in modern society: a man undertakes something creative, innovative and the destiny of a woman is home, childcare and gossips with neighbours.

The second tendency, the “discursive” direction in feminist linguistics, is not less vast. The interest of representatives of the second direction is concentrated on studying the features of discourse as a whole. Practically all researches are problem-focused, since they investigate speech behavior in ordinary daily situations that are of social importance. They are turned to essential social problems which as the result of the analysis can be better comprehended and, probably, will start to be solved. Language and society are regarded here as dialectically interrelated substances.

The discursive researches are characterized by a wide covering, analyzing the various aspects of conducting the argumentative dialogues – TV shows, political debates, conversations in the family, school and even the religious discourse, etc. They assume that on the basis of patriarchal stereotypes, fixed in language, different strategies of speech behavior of men and women develop. A famous linguist J. Penelope has even created the concept of “patriarchal universe of discourse”, the conceptual essence of which is reduced to the fact that women are compelled to define and express themselves in the language embodying the male vision of the world. So, it is necessary to change all male discourse and mentality connected with it, to be able to set ourselves free from this patriarchal mentality and language.

Thus, these were the main tendencies in feminist linguistics. It is also necessary to point out, that nowadays feminist linguistics has already reached a significant success in the field of reforming the language norm. The English language system underwent great changes; the feminists suggested using the words, which could describe women, their attitudes and female essence and nature better. While printing their announcements employers should use both male and female names of professions, otherwise they will have to pay a fine. English language feminists also suggest using the form “tey” instead of pronouns “he” or “she”. They offer more and more new words, trying finally to balance a man and a woman in language.

As a whole, the efforts undertaken by the representatives of feminist linguistics concerning its reformation can be divided in two basic directions: 1) replacement of sexist words and concepts by gender neutral ones; 2) creation of a positive image of perception of feminity and a woman in language.

But we should also comprehend that to achieve certain results the reformation of the language should concern discourse first of all. The discourse should be declared the arena of struggle for linguistic rights of women.

It is also highly important to emphasize the influence that feminist linguistics produced on gender problematic in language as well as on linguistics in general. First of all, the aspiration of feministic linguistics to change the language norms and the language system itself caused a wide resonance and an interdisciplinary discussion. And this, in its turn, promoted development of gender researches. The feministic linguistics has also added a number of new linguistic concepts and extended interpretation of the traditional concepts of “language behavior” and "significance". The researches of language gender asymmetries stimulated the deeper study of word-formation and nominative systems of language, and also of cultural stereotypes of feminity and masculinity as a whole.

And, finally, this discipline allowed women to see and to express themselves in a different way through the language, and just to be heard. And this is, probably, one of its greatest achievements.