O. Sidorenko, V. Nemesh. Verbalization of a social gender in media discourse: lexical-grammatical and functional-semantic aspects.

Abstract

Creating the bind between expositive-analytical method and contextual-interpretive one of gender-labeled lexemes has given an opportunity to distinguish language means of actualization of a social gender in mass-media discourse. According to the functional-semantic criterion, the name of a person as for the social gender is classified into the following groups: gender lexemes, represented by the grammemes of masculine or feminine: 1) the ones where feminine / masculine semes are fixed usually and equally where they manifest themselves meaningfully in significative and denotative-referential terms; 2) the ones being «epicine» in significative term but obtaining usually fixed ability to name masculine or feminine; bigender ones are split into two gender forms deprived of immanent signs of femininity / masculinity, but can be named both feminine and masculine depending on a type of activity or profession from the grammatical view; polygender ones for which system independence of gender characteristics from the gender itself is typical and which have an ability to be expressed by any kinds of grammemes.
Expressions of language androcentrism and speech sexism in the discourse of newspapers Den (the Day) and Dzerkalo Tyzhnia (the Mirror Weekly) can be considered as the following ones: 1) usage of bigender masculine grammemes along with a relevant feminine seme even when there is a correlative pair of feminine gender; 2) usage of masculine nouns as a general name of humans of both genders; 3) the usage of personal and interrogative-related pronouns that actualize the masculine semes of bigender nouns in gender neutral context; 4) syntactic matching according to the form of the grammatical type of a noun, and not to an actual gender of the referent. The list of expressions of gender correct writing includes: syntactic matching according not to a noun’s gender but to its gender characteristics, actualization of the feminine seme of bigender nouns, the usage of plural forms of bigender nouns.