Who Hides Behind the Subject: Gender – Language Relation in the Novels of the Turkish Writers Erendiz Atasü and Füruza

Abstract

The language mirrors the culture that constructs it and gender perspective in linguistic researches of Turkish language is a very interesting subject and represents a special challenge, primarily because Turkish language does not recognise gender category, which confirms the fact that gender is a social category firmly grounded in sex. The primary goal of the work is to shortly present the representation of woman in Turkish language on the examples from the short stories written by Erendiz Atasü i Füruzan. Given that the turkish society is conceived on the male model of power, in which the political regimes enabled and are still enabling predominance of one (male) gender over another (female) gender, the work tries to expose this dominance that could give a significant contribution to the destruction of stereotypes in gender roles. Cultural patterns about the (in)equality between genders, that we acquire through socialisation in the process of learning a language, define woman through stereotypical gender roles and patterns of behavior. By analysing the examples from the short stories of the mentioned Turkish authors, the work tries to point out the fact that there is a discrimination against woman in the society, culture, language... Also, the work represents a kind of an attempt of awakening that should result in the use of gender-sensitive language.

Keywords

• gender
• sex
• language
• discrimination
• contemporary turkish literature