Gender stereotypes of masculinity in dialect communication (based on the material of men's expletive nominations)

The aim of the research is to describe some of the traditional gender stereotypes of masculinity that exist in modern dialectic communication, based on an analysis of the abusive names of men. The relevance of the topic is due to the significance of the problem for identifying, as well as for the justification and strengthening of gender asymmetry existing in the modern Russian society. The methodological basis of the study – implemented in the works of A.V. Kirilina’s understanding of gender as a sociocultural construct, suggesting a description of the stereotypical gender ideas about signs, qualities, patterns of behavior that exist in the society due to belonging to a particular gender and reflected in various units of the language. The study analyzes the abusive nominations of men in Russian dialects and notes their use primarily for designating carriers of those qualities that do not correlate in the popular consciousness with the traditional “ideal” image of a man as a representative of the dominant sex, with a predetermined natural world order, the right to have dominant positions in the society. The following are negatively assessed: lack of physical strength and endurance, economic skills; parasitism; staying in idleness; spinelessness, weakness, complaisance in family life; excessive modesty (mukhryshka, gatila, chuzhespinnik, khabol’nik, prodyra, etc.). The rejection of qualities that do not meet the standards of life of the village society, established national moral values, by males is also confirmed – arrogance, boastfulness, unsociability, as well as impudence, sneakiness, cunning, roguishness, shamelessness (chvanishka, khval’bun, molchaga, ukhach, shnyra, khap, etc.). Male qualities that were negatively assessed with the help of swearing nominations only in their excessive manifestation or selectively, were revealed – a tendency to drink alcohol, aggressiveness, freedom of behavior (p’yanushka, buzuy, chuzhebabnik, etc.).The small number of abusive nominations related to men with semantics traditionally correlated in a dialectic environment with belonging exclusively or mainly to women and thereby perceived as reducing a man’s status is justified – grouchiness, greed, talkativeness, fastidiousness, importunity, fussiness, cowardice, scandalous, clumsy (khnych, zhadoba, balaban, chemezinnik, mula, tolkun, khlysten’, tyulyapay, tupyak, etc.). The author concludes that the dialectic swearing nominations of men, indirectly reflecting the specifics of the Russian national-cultural consciousness, support patriarchal gender stereotypes, representing evidence of the androcentricity of the dialectic picture of the world.