Cognitive Study of different Instrumental Views Towards Women in Societies with Sister Languages from the Perspective of Cultural Linguistics; A Case Study of France and Italy

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Ph.D. Student of General Linguistics, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran

2 Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran.

3 .Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran.

Abstract

Introduction: Cognitively, the way we stand for entities around us is mainly represented via our language and the way we approach women is amongst those culturally linguistic representations. Speakers of different languages differ in their attitudes towards women as tremendously as their languages differ. The purpose of this study is to show the quality and effects of Cognitive representation of the instrumental view towards women in societies with cognate languages using the framework of Cultural Linguistics.
Methods: We examined the grammatical gender of 330 common tool-words in various industries, in French and Italian languages as our sample societies, and analyzed them qualitatively according to the proposed theory and also quantitatively in regard with the Significant Difference.
Findings: The Chi-square test did not consider the difference in the frequency of the feminine and masculine genders inside Italian as well as the difference in the frequency of the feminine gender between the two languages significant. So, this convergence between the French and Italians is proportional to their high linguistic commonalities. A new methodology in collecting and analyzing categorically Cognitive data and locating the instrumental view towards women in the morphology of gendered languages are the other innovative achievements of this research.

Highlights

  1. Campbell L. Historical Linguistics; An Introduction. 3rd Editio. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press; 2013.
  2. Ethnologue. Italian [Internet]. 2021.
  3. Kamyabi Gol, Atiye; Sharifi, Shahla & Akbarpour H. Sexism and Recognizing the Relation between Grammatical Gender and Cultural Categories in the German and Russian Languages from the Perspective of Cultural Linguistics. J Woman Cult Arts. 2020;11(4):481–511.
  4. Ghazanfari Moghaddam, Nadia; Sharifi Moghaddam, Azadeh & Farashbandi R. An Analysis of Sexism in linguistic elements of Persian literature: A Linguistic Survey of three short stories by Sadegh Hedayat. In Shiraz: The first National Conference on Teaching English, Literature and Translation.; 2013.
  5. Ghazanfari Moghaddam, Nadia; Sharifi Moghaddam, Azadeh & Farashbandi R. Associating the Women’s Dignity in terms of Lexicon: A Case Study of Sexism in Linguistics Items. In Tehran: Motherhood and the Woman in the Islamic Revolution level Conference; 2013.
  6. Lepschy G. Sexism and the Italian language. Italianist. 1987;7(1):158–69.
  7. Adamson R. Sexism in French: A Case Study. In: Jennifer Birkett & Elizabeth Harvey, editor. Determined Women: Studies in the Construction of the Female Subject. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd.; 1991. p. 173–95.
  8. Palmer GB. Toward a theory of Cultural Linguistics. Austin: University of Texas Press.; 1996.

9.         Langacker RW. Concept, image, and symbol: The cognitive basis of grammar. Concept, Image, and Symbol: The Cognitive Basis of Grammar. New York: Mouton de Gruyter; 1991. 1–395 p

Keywords


  1. Campbell L. Historical Linguistics; An Introduction. 3rd Editio. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press; 2013.
  2. Ethnologue. Italian [Internet]. 2021.
  3. Kamyabi Gol, Atiye; Sharifi, Shahla & Akbarpour H. Sexism and Recognizing the Relation between Grammatical Gender and Cultural Categories in the German and Russian Languages from the Perspective of Cultural Linguistics. J Woman Cult Arts. 2020;11(4):481–511.
  4. Ghazanfari Moghaddam, Nadia; Sharifi Moghaddam, Azadeh & Farashbandi R. An Analysis of Sexism in linguistic elements of Persian literature: A Linguistic Survey of three short stories by Sadegh Hedayat. In Shiraz: The first National Conference on Teaching English, Literature and Translation.; 2013.
  5. Ghazanfari Moghaddam, Nadia; Sharifi Moghaddam, Azadeh & Farashbandi R. Associating the Women’s Dignity in terms of Lexicon: A Case Study of Sexism in Linguistics Items. In Tehran: Motherhood and the Woman in the Islamic Revolution level Conference; 2013.
  6. Lepschy G. Sexism and the Italian language. Italianist. 1987;7(1):158–69.
  7. Adamson R. Sexism in French: A Case Study. In: Jennifer Birkett & Elizabeth Harvey, editor. Determined Women: Studies in the Construction of the Female Subject. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd.; 1991. p. 173–95.
  8. Palmer GB. Toward a theory of Cultural Linguistics. Austin: University of Texas Press.; 1996.

9.         Langacker RW. Concept, image, and symbol: The cognitive basis of grammar. Concept, Image, and Symbol: The Cognitive Basis of Grammar. New York: Mouton de Gruyter; 1991. 1–395 p