Linguistic representation of gender stereotypes in Japanese and Russian folk songs

This article attempts to comparatively analyze gender stereotypes in the Japanese and Russian languages, where gender roles, masculinity, and femininity are viewed as cultural concepts rather than biologically determined factors. For the first time, special attention is paid to identifying universal and specific characteristics of gender stereotypes in the compared languages using folk song lyrics as an example; the specifics of the linguistic representation of gender ideas in each analyzed linguoculture are revealed. The aim of the study was to identify the specifics of the linguistic representation of gender stereotypes in the lyrics of Japanese and Russian folk songs. The study revealed female and male images that convey stereotypical ideas about their roles in society. Much of the material studied is represented by universal ideas about women and men, which convey gender stereotyping, where women embody external beauty and internal gentleness and kindness, while men embody strength, confidence, and a dominant role. At the same time, the analyzed folklore material preserves the national specificity of Japanese and Slavic cultures, reflecting the Japanese and Russian linguistic worldviews, which is expressed through the lexical and semantic uniqueness of the language systems. Japanese linguoculture is characterized by the avoidance of direct characterizations of female appearance through the epithets “beautiful” and “sweet”; descriptions of women’s eyes and legs, and mention of age are practically absent. The male image in the lyrics of Japanese enka songs is expressed through the epithets tsuyoi (strong), warui (bad), and zurui (cunning, unfair). Voice, smell, and gait are mentioned as body parts that form a masculine image. In the lyrics of Russian folk songs, the use of lexemes indicating a woman’s age is quite common: devchina, devka, deva, molodushka, sudarushka, matushka, starushka, which also emphasizes her social status. At the same time, the age of a man does not have a strict differentiation, but can be conveyed through the social status of “young man”, “husband”, “father”, more indicative of the male image is the marital status: single/married.

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