SOCIAL RULES AND EXPECTATIONS FOR FEMININITY/MASCULINITY AS REPRESENTED IN YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE (ON PARALLEL CORPORA TEXT ANALYSIS)

Abstract

Purpose. The paper is given to the topic of the social rules and expectations as reflected in the young adult literature, which is among the prior interests due to contemporary world population mobility. The subject for analysis is represented by fiction texts, which compose the parallel corpora, in English and Russian. The authors aim at describing specific language means used to display social rules and expectations in the fiction parallel texts in the English and Russian languages. Methodology. The methodology of the research is based on the interdisciplinary approach to studying social interactions that includes cognitive and discourse analysis. This embraces the corpus and comparative analyses of parallel English as well as Russian fiction texts. Results. Considering fiction texts simultaneously as cultural artefacts and discourse cases, their didactic nature signifying its part in forming, reproducing and codifying social expectancies and rules as mutual experience, gives the researcher an opportunity to identify specific linguistic units and features that express expectances and rules of gender interaction. Corpora and comparative analyses help to identify differences of English and Russian linguistic means that are used to denote participants of gender interaction. The abovementioned differences include linguistic and discourse features influenced by the cognitive mechanisms. They are as follows: thesaurus environment, semantic similarity and collocation capacity of units. Practical application. The results of the research can be used in L2 teaching to promote sociocultural competence.

Keywords

• литература «young adult»
• гендер
• когнитивная деятельность
• дискурс
• художественный текст
• социальные ожидания и установки
• тезаурус
• комбинаторика