Płeć - język - kultura

Abstract

The book deals with the issue of multidimensional and diversified relations between gender, language and culture. Gender is understood above all as a culturallyentangled phenomenon. Special emphasis is put on its variety and on the fact that it is not self-evident. Various types of gender are distinguished, which means, as we know from the establishments of gender studies, definitely more than two. Thus, the work is decidedly in favour of the conception according to which gender is a cultural construct, described as extremely complex and motivated by a series of factors, not only biological ones. The study consists of three parts. In the first one (Gender in theory), selected theoretical aspects of gender and its relation to language are reflected upon, the state of research to date has been reported on. Also, there are suggested some solutions that could help in widening the scope of reflection or verifying some points of view repeated frequently enough to be regarded as axioms. According to the author, what would be the most productive is a consistent widening of the scope of gender by, for example, paying attention to its aspects that are statistically marginal, yet culturally and socially significant. Furthermore, accentuating the historical factor is crucial too, because it can shed a different light on the issues described, and, as it seems, definitively interpreted. The second part (Gender in language and text) proposes the analysis of gender in the broad sense by considering different cultural texts, but also in the area of language lexicon. Lexis is considered at the nominal level of selected semantic fields, using the examples of non-standard behaviours and gender identities. When choosing a textual material, the main is the area of popular culture (Old-Polish popular writings, works by Agnieszka Osiecka, Katarzyna Nosowska and Maria Peszek), as well as non-literary texts, such as love guidebook which is very popular speech genre these days. This kind of research area lets to show gender as a multi-faceted phenomenon, specifically typologized and visualized functioning in a wide social circulation. The work ends with the part devoted to practical aspects (Gender in didactics), opening, at the same time, the area of applied linguistics to gender issues understood more widely and universally. In this part, historical entanglements of the very issues are particularly emphasised. The main aim of the work is to sensitize the reader to what linguistics has already contributed to, and, above all, what it still can contribute through reflections on gender, to the area of culture, and more widely, the world surrounding us.