How do "avtorki" and "experts" change languages and reality
Language, contrary to stereotypes about the "unshakable literary norm", - the substance is mobile and fluid: it reflects not only reality, but also changes occurring in it. Simply put, the modernization of the language is constantly, but not always painless. At the forefront of this process are now feminitives: women are increasingly entering the “male territory”, occupying the posts of directors, directors and presidents, who were previously considered exclusively or primarily male. And sooner or later it should be reflected in speech, including fixing the idea that such professions and roles are normal for a woman.
At the same time, there is no consensus even on the use of feminitives, which are fixed as a dictionary norm: many still consider that the “artist” sounds weightier and more professional than the “artist” (and it is clear how this perception has historically formed). What can we say about new forms like "director", "author" or "director", which seem incongruous to opponents of the process, and the suffix -k- dismissive. It is not surprising that feminitivs are often called the “disfiguring of the language,” without realizing that their task is to make women in certain social roles and professional communities visible and respected.
At the same time, there are professions in which the femininity does not cause rejection: for example, the usual "singer" or "teacher". The reason is simple: the tradition to see women in the "proper" roles ("secretary", "ballerina"), but not in respectable positions of professors, diplomats and surgeons. And although, frankly speaking, there is no fundamental aesthetic difference between an “athlete” or “graduate student” and “authored”, one word provokes protests, and another does not. Similar problems exist not only in the Russian language, as well as not only in the Russian reality: they try to fight the traditionalist linguistic gender imbalance in different languages in different ways. We understand how.
English
The processes taking place in the English language are more or less visible: the gender-marked names of the professions are gradually replaced by gender neutral ones. Neutral vocabulary in the language caught on quite successfully, with the exception, perhaps, of the word "actor", which is now increasingly used for both sexes (as the Guardian does, for example). This model is often suggested to be introduced in the Russian language, but for us it is an ambiguous way: after all, nouns do not have the gender category in English, therefore both the friend, the surgeon, the teacher, and the firefighter are perceived as neutral. In Russian, the "surgeon" is primarily a male surgeon, and this is how we perceive him. But these are not all initiatives: they also call in English
Another fem movement in the English language is to introduce "she" as a neutral pronoun, when we do not know the gender of the person we are talking about, or reason abstractly. There are three common options: "He wakes up at 5 am" ("He gets up at 5 am"), "He or she wakes up at 5 am" ("He or she gets up at 5 am"), "They wake up at 5 am "(" He / she gets up at 5 am "). Feminists offer a fourth option: use neutral pronoun "she". An ardent supporter of all these measures is Maria Konnikova, a journalist with The New Yorker, who writes about psychology and scientific achievements related to the study of the brain. It clarifies the linguist Daria Serres, this form is already widespread in scientific articles.
Spanish language
In Spanish there is a category of the genus, and here there are two of them - male and female. In matters of femininities, Spain did not take the gender-neutral English path, but, on the contrary, introduces the missing feminitaries, as suggested in Russia. For example, now in the newspapers of the country about the presidents of the female write "la presidenta" (instead of the old form, when they added the female article "la" to the word "presidente").
In this case, the division into masculine and feminine in Spanish is preserved in the plural. In classical grammar there is a rule: if there is at least one man in a group, then the whole group is called masculine. How often
At the same time, historians, politicians, and writers argue massively about feminitives in Spain. One of the active supporters of the use of the female form "nosotras" is the political party Podemos, which took third place in the last elections to the Spanish parliament. One of their slogans is "¡Un país para nosotras!" ("Country for us women!"). "Nosotras" as "we" in Podemos is used by both women and men. And in October of this year, the real battle over the plural form erupted between members of the Royal Spanish Academy: some call femininities “ridiculous”, while others advocate the fight against gender bias in the language and the search for new forms, even if it is difficult.
Ukrainian language
Ukrainian and Russian belong to the same group, and similar processes occur in them: in Ukrainian it is common to use common feminitaries that have taken root in the language - although less common words like "doctor" still cause rejection. According to the journalist and philologist Ksenia Turkova, who now lives in Kiev, almost all Ukrainian media use feminitives (“I would even dare to say that everything is,” she specifies), for which the suffix -k-. In the credits on television, it is common to write common feminitives - “expert”, “journalist”. "Calling a woman a journalist in Ukrainian is considered
French
The situation with changes in French is very unusual by world standards: the country has a French Academy - an ancient institution that maintains the purity of the French language. For example, the whole of France calls the weekend Anglicism "le weekend", but the French Academy condemns it and demands the use of the excellent French phrase "fin de semaine".
The French Academy also has an opinion on feminitiv issues. In French, as in Russian, there is an extensive list of professions whose names are traditionally more associated with "male": "médecin" (doctor), "peintre" (artist), "gouverneur" (governor), "ministre" (minister) . Recently, the French began to come up with female versions of the names for such professions, such as "sénateur" / "sénatrice" ("senator" / "senatrix"), or put a feminine article before the word - "la présidente".
As a philologist Nadia Biryukova, who lives in France, tells us, the French Academy as a whole is opposed to feminites, calling the “presidents” and “professors” stupidity and excess. Nevertheless, the academicians have no administrative power, and the use of feminitives in practice often disagrees with the instructions of the academy. For example, the National Assembly of France decided to indicate in the feminine all the posts that occupy
Another change in the French, carried out at the state level, - the refusal to appeal "Mademoiselle". According to Elena Smirnova, a researcher and feminist, they decide not to use it, because it indicates the marital status of a woman (Madame is a married woman, and Mademoiselle is unmarried), while for men there is no such distinction. Close attention to marital status recognized as discriminatory women, and in 2012, after long debates and rallies, the “Mademoisel” appeal was removed from administrative forms. At the same time, as Nadya Biryukova says, the modernization of the language also provoked protests: “Many people said that women actually like being called“ Mademoiselle. ”But now in the professional world this word has disappeared altogether. Sometimes from time to time, they say that, but rather on the market or in the bakery. "
In France, there is, as Smirnova says, a similar Spanish problem with the pronouns of the plural, where "elles" (they) or "toutes" (all) are used to describe a group of women, and "ils" (they) or "tous" for groups of people in which there is at least one man. She is looking for different solutions. Lesbian magazine Wel Wel Wel reminds that such a provision was introduced only in the XVII century; Bose grammar pointed to him like this: "The masculine gender is considered more noble than the feminine because of the superiority of a man over a woman." The editors propose and apply in the journal a set of more “equal” grammatical rules used in the language before. For example, in enumeration, coordination does not occur with the masculine word - because of the "male prevalence over the female" - but with the word that is the last one in the enumeration. "Contrary to popular belief, such rules do not complicate the language, but only make it more equal," summarizes Elena Smirnova.
Arabic
Alfia Khabibullin, an Arab philologist, warns about a certain Arabic language is not quite correct. There is a so-called Arab diglossia: a common for all literary language, which is used in official media, "serious" literature and the humanities, and dialects that differ from the literary Arabic, roughly as Russian from Ukrainian or Polish. In general, according to Alfia, there are relatively few gender biases in Arabic. In the Qur'an, there are words in the masculine and feminine in the neighborhood, for example, "the believer and the believer must ...".
According to Alfiya, although in Arabic, if there is at least one man in the group, the whole group should be talked about in the masculine, usually the Koran is used in speech, and in the announcements of men and women always stand out separately:
In the Arabic language, fem initiatives, as Alfia says, practically do not exist: “Arab women have two feminisms. There is Western feminism, but there is feminism taking into account traditions and originality.“ Western ”feminists like Mona al-Tahawi write in English Language: English and French are the languages of the elites. And feminists who speak Arabic, firstly, are less heard, and secondly, they are engaged in other problems - for example, how to teach women to read and write or not to let single women die of hunger. Roughly speaking, the rich have an Glyian and French, and the poor have no language problems yet. At the same time, the local dialect is not officially regulated at all, and Fusha (literary) is not used in everyday life. "
Polish language
In Polish, the situation is generally similar to the Russian, except that they discuss this issue more massively. Irina Shestopalova, a pollenist and feminist philologist, says that in Polish most of the masculine words have a female form: "autor" / "autorka", "scenograf" / "scenografka", "scenarzysta" / "scenarzystka", "historyk" / " historyczka ". Nevertheless, problems remain: many words do not have a female form, the suffix -ka- seems to some dismissive, while women themselves often consider the "male" name of the profession to be more euphonic and prestigious.
At the same time, in the XIX century, as Irina explains, feminitives in Polish were more familiar and used more often: at the turn of the XIX and XX centuries "doktorka", "profesorka", "docentka", "redaktorka" were completely used in the media. Nevertheless, in the second half of the 20th century, attitudes toward feminitives changed. In Poland,
In Polish society there is still no consensus about feminitives. In 2013, a survey was conducted in the country about the need to create feminitives from male profession names - and only half of the women answered in the affirmative. Some Polish feminists try to use feminitives without the suffix -ka-: in 2012, Johanna Mucha called herself "ministra sportu". Some linguists said that "ministra" is wrong, you need to say "ministerka". The dispute broke out, and as a result, the representatives of Wikipedia decided to ask the Polish Language Council how to call Joanna Mucha and other women who are engaged in surgery, political science or physics. The council replied that "ministra" is an irregular form, like "profesora", but it seems more solid.
In addition to feminitives, there is another problem in Polish: in the plural, it literally refers women to inanimate objects, things. "In Polish, there are two third-person pronouns -" oni "and" one "." Oni "is a group of people with at least one man." One " - this is all the rest: women, children, objects, animals ", - says Irina. Now these two forms are called personal-male and non-personal-male (she used to be called female-real). Ideas about how to correct the situation in the near future , not yet: it is impossible to change the "feminine" kind without a radical structural change in grammar.
