RUSSIAN GENDER REPRESENTATIONS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE THIRD MILLENNIUM

RUSSIAN GENDER REPRESENTATIONS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE THIRD MILLENNIUM

Author:  A.V. Kirilina

Affiliation:  Moscow City Pedagogical University

Abstract: 

The paper deals with the semiotics of gender representations in post-Soviet Russia. Their forms and constructions are being connected with the complex play of global and local flows. Two main ideologies are being observed in the public dis-course: 1) the ideology of global identity which doesn’t make any difference between the masculinity and the femininity or minimizes it; 2) the ideology of anti-Sovietism, which rejects any soviet values; soviet gender norms are also condemned or discursive ignored. In compliance with these ideologies, two main discourse tendencies are being discussed:
1) The trend to the elimination of gender asymmetry. Its expressions are: a gender expertise of socially significant text and documents; splitting into male and female in the verbal and non-verbal presentation of human beings; a symmetric and proportional presentation of verbal predicates with the male and female subjects, etc. An important component of this trend is the institutional fixation of new norms in the texts of lows, in the public discourse und Internet, in identity cards and other personal documentation: since 2011 a dash is possible in the birth certificate’s column “mother”. Important semiotic changes in the model of child and childhood are also a sign of the new gender construction. One more specific feature of modern gender construction in Russian medial discourse is the strengthening of gender differences through linguistic loan translation (calque) from Global English and the replacement of some Russian gender neutral words and expressions through splitted constructions: мужчины и женщины (loan translation of men and women) instead of люди.
2) The trend to the reanimation and strengthening of old patriarchat stereo-types. Its expression are e.g. the rise of pseudo-scientific texts with misogynistic content; the medial presentation of women as consumer and sexual object; the deheroization of soviet women, etc. An important role in this process plays the rising propaganda of religion and religious thinking.

Keywords:  gender, discourse, social cognition, post-Soviet period

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Pages:  570-574