Negative Features of Female Image in Ossetian Proverbs

Abstract

The article deals with the analysis of proverbs and sayings, the semantics of which contributes to the formation of certain ethnic stereotypes of women. Proverbs itemize the image of a woman in her value judgement and explain her behavior based on private and general assessments. By the examples of Ossetian proverbs, the negative features of the concept «woman» are studied according to modes “female gossipiness” and “female intellect”. The linguistic and cultural analysis of the paroemias representing the concept “woman” showed that the mentioned concept contains a significant amount of information with a national-cultural character. The authors define the dominant evaluations of a female image, comparing the stereotypes of femininity in the paremias of different languages.