Cognitive stereotypes, forming the concept “business lady” in naïve world picture (on the material of Russian and German languages)

Abstract

On the material of modern media texts in Russian and German it is described linguacultural specificity of the concept “business lady” through the cognitive system of stereotypes, reflecting the typical notions of modern business lady in the naive picture of the world. The practical material for the article was the text information, analytical and business publications, published in the print or electronic media in Russian and German. The study implied the methods of frame modeling and contextual analysis. It is identified cognitive layers of the concept, investigated the specificity of its lexical and semantic representations. On the basis of the selected cognitive signs frame structure “business lady” is considered as a set of slots that objectifies the typical signs of a business lady, typical of Russian and German world pictures. It was found that the stereotypical image of a business lady has a certain set of features – professional and moral qualities, intellectual ability, education, behavior, appearance, age, etc. Thus the formation of a business lady’s image in media texts takes place in close connection with the formation of stereotypes about women in the field of business relations, i.e. relying on certain standardized representation of business lady, which are fixed in the public mind.

Keywords

• cognitive stereotype
• naive picture of the world
• concept
• frame
• frame-based modeling concept
• business lady
• media text