Stylistic Features of Women's Speech in Automobile Discourse

For citation: Rogaleva O.S. (2017) Lingvostilisticheskie osobennosti zhenskoy rechi v avtomobil'nom diskurse [Stylistic Features of Women's Speech in Automobile Discourse]. Mediaskop 2. (in Russian). Available at: http://www.mediascope.ru/2325

© Olga S. Rogaleva
PhD, Associate Professor at the Chair of Journalism and Media Linguistics, Dostoevsky Omsk State University (Omsk, Russia), olga_rogaleva78@mail.ru 

Abstract

Nowadays gender segmentation of mass media discourse is evident: women's and men's discursive practices stand out. The gender marking of automobile discourse is manifested both in the delineation of the media texts into "women's" (written by female journalists and addressed to women) and "men's" (written by male journalists and addressed to men) and also in specific differences (thematic, genre, linguistic).

The purpose of this study is to reveal the features of the formation and translation of the image of female driver and the linguistic nature of the texts of automotive thematic in modern media for women.

As a result of the study, the following conclusions were drawn:

1. Identification features of female speech are reflected in the empirical material: texts are characterized with emotionality, evaluation, an abundance of exclamation designs, interjections, diminutives.

2. Analysis of the material revealed the dominance of the anthropomorphic model − metaphorical feminization of the car is actively used in women's texts on automotive subjects.

3. An artifact metaphor is used more actively than in man's automobile discourse. This indicates the particular perception of this reality by the female audience of car lovers.

4. The semantic analysis allows to draw a conclusion about modeling of a new type of "female consciousness" on the pages of women's automobile magazines, which reinforces the activity-based pragmatic aspect by including such a masculine quality as driving a car. There is a formation and translation of a new gender stereotype "woman behind the wheel", which combines both stereotypical and masculine meanings, as well as feminine.

Keywords: gender, women's automobile discourse, women's speech, stylistics.

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