Xorijiy lingvistika va lingvodidaktika
–
Зарубежная
лингвистика
и
лингводидактика
–
Foreign
Linguistics and Linguodidactics
Journal home page:
https://inscience.uz/index.php/foreign-linguistics
Features of the speech of male and female translation
guides
Kamola ALIMOVA
Uzbekistan State University of World Languages
ARTICLE INFO
ABSTRACT
Article history:
Received January 2024
Received in revised form
10 January 2024
Accepted 25 February 2024
Available online
25 May 2024
The article discusses the features of male and female speech
among guides and translators. It is the gender identity of the
translator that has become the object of close interest in
linguistics since the last decades of the twentieth century. The
gender aspect is attracting more and more attention in
linguistic research, which has led to the formation of a new
scientific direction called gender linguistics.
2181-3663
/©
2024 in Science LLC.
https://doi.org/10.47689/2181-3701-vol2-iss2-pp85-90
This is an open-access article under the Attribution 4.0 International
(CC BY 4.0) license (
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.ru
Keywords:
linguistics,
women's speech,
men's speech,
communicative behavior,
social role,
guide-translator,
intercultural.
Gide-tarjimorlarning erkak va ayol nutqi xususiyatlari
ANNOTATSIYA
Kalit so‘zlar
:
tilshunoslik,
ayollar nutqi,
erkaklar nutqi,
kommunikativ xatti-
harakatlar,
ijtimoiy rol,
gid-tarjimon,
madaniyatlararo.
Maqolada gid-tarjimonlarning erkak va ayol nutqining
xususiyatlari muhokama qilinadi. Aynan tarjimonning jinsi
XX asrning
so‘nggi o‘n yilliklaridan boshlab tilshunoslikning
yaqindan
qiziqish
ob’ektiga
aylangan.
Tilshunoslik
tadqiqotlarida gender jihati tobora ko‘proq e’tiborni tortmoqda,
bu esa gender tilshunosligi deb nomlangan yangi ilmiy
yo'nalishning shakllanishiga olib keldi.
1
Uzbekistan State University of World Languages
Xorijiy lingvistika va lingvodidaktika
–
Зарубежная лингвистика
и лингводидактика
–
Foreign Linguistics and Linguodidactics
Issue
–
2
№
2 (2024) / ISSN 2181-3701
86
Особенности мужской и женской речи гидов
-
переводчиков
АННОТАЦИЯ
Ключевые слова:
лингвистика,
женская речь,
мужская речь,
коммуникативное
поведение,
социальная роль,
гид
-
переводчик,
межкультурный.
В статье анализируются особенности мужской и
женской
речи
гидов
-
переводчиков.
Гендерная
идентичность
переводчика
привлекла
внимание
лингвистов начиная с последних десятилетий XX века.
Гендерный аспект становится все более значимым в
лингвистических исследованиях, что способствовало
развитию нового научного направления –
гендерной
лингвистики.
INTRODUCTION
The concept of linguistic personality and its structure is closely related to the
concept of the picture of the world. Being, in essence, one of the main components of the
structure of a linguistic personality, the picture of the world is reflected at the verbal-
semantic and cognitive levels, being objectified in the first case in specific sign forms and
realized in the form of special units of consciousness in the second case [2]. One of the
aspects of the further development of the problem of the linguistic picture of the world is
the differences in the vision and description of the world by each
–
man and woman
–
which is dealt with by the theory called gender.
The gender approach in science is based on the concept that it is not the biological
differences between men and women that are important, but the cultural and social
meaning that society attaches to these differences. The foundation of gender research
was the identification of differences in the roles, social statuses, and other aspects of the
lives of men and women. Objectification of male and female views of the world (gender
picture of the world) occurs in written and oral speech, in particular in fiction. Using the
theory of gender, it is possible to interpret translations of works of fiction differently,
where the authors’ views on gender relations are clearly and deeply embodied; from this
point of view, differences in the translation of works of fiction due to the gender of the
guides-translators are of interest.
The relevance of the research topic is because the speech of guide translators is a
very difficult and varied work. It involves a clash of different cultures, mentalities,
traditions, ways of life, and historical eras. Here an important role is played by the
translator’s gender personality (male and female speech), his style, and creative
potential. At the same time, the personality of the guides-translators has a tangible
impact on the original speech. Of course, ideally, a balance should be maintained between
the desire for basic accuracy and material so that the translator’s personality is not
reflected in the translation, but in practice, this is not always feasible [2]. It is the gender
identity of the guides-translators that has become the object of close interest in
linguistics since the last decades of the ХХ century. The gender aspect is attracting more
and more attention in linguistic research, which has led to the formation of a new
scientific direction
–
linguistic genderology, also called gender linguistics. Its subject of
interest is the influence of gender on the choice of linguistic means when performing
translation. Issues related to the influence of the translator’s gender characteristics on
Xorijiy lingvistika va lingvodidaktika
–
Зарубежная лингвистика
и лингводидактика
–
Foreign Linguistics and Linguodidactics
Issue
–
2
№
2 (2024) / ISSN 2181-3701
87
the preservation of the author’s style and intent are studied by both foreign and Uzbek
scientists. However, it cannot be said that the gender aspect of guides-translators is a
fully studied phenomenon.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Studying modern linguistics, linguists took into account almost all the social
characteristics of speakers: age, place of birth and residence, education, and profession.
Meanwhile, the basic division of humanity into two species
–
men and women
–
until
recently remained beyond the attention of scientists. Gender linguistics, one of the
relatively new areas of language research, studies how gender influences the use of
language by women and men, and how the communicative behavior of men and women
differs.
Women's speech has always been different from men's. Popular ideas about the
difference between male and female speech are reflected in proverbs and sayings in
which female speech is presented negatively, in contrast to correct male speech.
The polarity of assessments of male and female speech can be explained by the fact that
all human consciousness, “regardless of its gender, is thoroughly imbued with the ideas
and values of male ideology with its priorities of masculinity, logic, rationality and the
objectivity of women” [4]. Society has developed certain stereotypes of the behavior and
speech of men and women, especially interpreter guides, for example, “Men do not
distinguish colors of the peripheral part of the spectrum well: they may not have
concepts of colors such as mauve or purple. This difference is because women's
experience in this area, for historical reasons, is characterized by a higher degree of
structure, similar to how the Eskimos have 22 names for snow. Women's ability to better
distinguish colors can be classified as a gender-specific skill" [1]. The purpose of a
significant proportion of women’s speech contacts is communication itself, contact,
phatic, while for men it is the exchange of information. A conversation about troubles
between a man and a woman often ends in communication failure, since the man is
guided by the information model, and the woman by the empathic one.
We can talk about “the gender specificity of names of persons with evaluative
meaning..., a significantly larger number of negatively marked words have a masculine
specificity” [5]. Although our society has undergone significant changes over the last
century, and the role of women in the family and society is becoming increasingly
important, language remains largely unresponsive to this. “The linguistic picture of the
world in terms of reflecting the social roles of men and women is very static” [3].
Differences between male and female speech among translator guides are found at
almost all levels of the language: phonetic, lexical, and word-formative, as well as in word
usage and speech behavior. In pronunciation, a woman differs from a man in the timbre
of her voice, the pace of speech, the nature of pauses, and the duration of vowels.
Many male guides and translators are characterized by a smaller mouth opening
when pronouncing sounds than women, as well as speech with very altered vowel
sounds, their quantitative and qualitative reduction, with loss of vowels. The vowel
phonemes /a/, /o/, /u/, /i/, /e/ in any unstressed position in a word can be represented
in male speech by sounds after hard consonants and after soft consonants: shift. In the
female speech of guide-translators, the pronunciation of a wide, open, long sound [a], the
duration of which is equal to the stressed vowel or even exceeds it, is often found in the
first pre-stressed syllable after hard consonants in place of the phonemes
a, o
.
Xorijiy lingvistika va lingvodidaktika
–
Зарубежная лингвистика
и лингводидактика
–
Foreign Linguistics and Linguodidactics
Issue
–
2
№
2 (2024) / ISSN 2181-3701
88
This phenomenon was typical for Old Moscow pronunciation. Zemskaya E.A.,
Kitaigorodskaya M.V., Rozanova N.N. attribute the prevalence of stretching of the pre-
stressed [a] in modern pronunciation of women to the phenomenon of redistribution of
old pronunciation variants according to other social characteristics [2].
The female speech of pronunciation guides and translators is characterized by the
diphthongism of the stressed /o/ and /e/, when the phrasal stress falls on them: Move
forward, please! The bus is stupid! Also, in women's speech, there is an affricatization of
teeth, which is less characteristic of men's speech.
In women's emotional speech, the stretching of the stressed vowel is widespread:
So cute, so good! My dear! In male speech, in stressed words, along with the lengthening
of the stressed vowel, stretching of the consonant is widely represented, which is usually
not found in female speech: R-r-az, and in ladies! Get out of here, get out of here, you
scoundrel!
Women are more emotional and talk about their feelings more often. They make
wider use of various intonation means, for example, changing register. The high register
usually expresses a positive assessment, and the low register a negative one: What a cute,
pretty little puppy! What a disgrace!
In their speech, female guides and translators use aspiration, labialization
(articulation of sounds with rounding of lips extended forward), and nasalization
(articulation of sounds with simultaneous exhalation of air through the mouth and nose)
–
usually when transmitting someone else's speech with a negative assessment.
Men, on the other hand, are poor at expressing their emotions (especially positive
ones) vocally. Their pitch hearing is less developed; men do not perceive the nuances of
female intonation. Women's speech is more melodic and richer in intonation. This feature
is noted in the Russian proverb: One growls and barks, the other purrs and snorts [2].
There are fewer pauses in the female speech of guide-translators than in the male one.
While female guides and translators often use intonation to express different meanings,
men in similar situations use vocabulary and grammar. Especially when expressing
evaluation [4]. The difference between male and female speech among guide-translators
also manifests itself at the accent level. The author conducted a study on the speech of
guides-translators. The following requirements were imposed on the informants: Russian
and English are non-native languages for them, have a philological education, and have
worked as a translator for at least 10 years. As a result of a mixed sample, a group of
80 people (40 women and 40 men) with the same social characteristics: age (within the
same age group), social status, and education were identified from the total number of
interviewed translators of the Silk Road Adventures company.
A study of the peculiarities of using accent doublets showed that women are more
conservative in their speech than men, more often they choose the option recommended
by dictionaries as “basic”, “preferred”, often referring to the “senior” norm, while men
prefer the acceptable, less desirable (according to the characteristics of dictionaries), but
a common option.
Of the nouns examined, the use of words shows a difference by gender: female
guides and translators more often pronounce traditional options (bargE, agrEement), and
men choose fewer common options (bArge, Agreement).
Of the adjectives we examined, there is a difference in the use of words by gender:
female guides-interpreters more often pronounce the traditional variants (slEek,
mUscular), and men usually choose the more common variants (sleEk, muscUlar).
Xorijiy lingvistika va lingvodidaktika
–
Зарубежная лингвистика
и лингводидактика
–
Foreign Linguistics and Linguodidactics
Issue
–
2
№
2 (2024) / ISSN 2181-3701
89
For example, in Russian of the 17 verbs examined, the dependence of the use of accent
variants on the gender of the speakers is found in 11 words. Women more often than
men pronounce the traditional variants: запыхАться, Искриться, черкАть, окислИться,
ржАветь, опорожнИть, опорожнЕнный, сАднить, сдвоИть [out of breath, sparkle,
scribble, oxidize, rust, empty, emptied, sore, double] and less often the traditional
variants pepper and wedge [пЕрчить и вклИнить]. Women more often use adjectives,
“endearments”, pronouns, particles, interjections, i.e. words into which you can put
emotion, and men more often use nouns that denote concepts and terms.
“As long as a man worked on a typewriter, it was a machine. Since the beginning of the
XX century, he was replaced by a “Pishka young lady” –
and the car turned into a typewriter.
It was the woman who in her speech consistently changed all the old Russian words like a
cup, miska, spoon, basin, and plate into cup, bowl, spoon (and spoon), basin, and plate,
turning the diminutive suffix -k- into a mandatory sign of the word belonging to the noun"
[1]. Thus, women’s speech among guide
-translators is more normative, since women are
more involved in raising children, monitoring their speech, and striving to speak correctly.
Men use swear words and stylistically reduced vocabulary more often than women,
sometimes even to express a positive assessment or admiration. Men tend to be restrained
in expressing feelings and do not use extreme, overly emotional assessments.
Women guides and translators are softer and more compliant in communication,
better aware of the state of others, and better able to control their behavior than men.
Men are more assertive in communication, strive to dominate the conversation, express
their intentions directly, without using polite forms, are sometimes aggressive, and have
poor control over their behavior [2].
Thus, male and female guides-translators represent communicatively different
linguistic personalities.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion of this study, it should be noted the promise of further cross-cultural,
comparative, ethno- and linguocultural studies of the features of interlingual
correspondences in gender based on two or three languages. Thus, a translation can be
considered successful only if the voices of the author and the translator sound in unison,
and the mentality of the original language shines through the language of the translated
text. However, such harmony can be destroyed by not paying attention to the stylistic and
grammatical laws of text construction in the original, as well as a result of an
insufficiently serious attitude to the gender problem.
The gender aspect presents an interesting and at the same time complex
translation problem. However, since this problem, despite its obvious relevance in
translation studies, has not been sufficiently studied, it seems to us that an even more in-
depth study of this area is necessary, which, based on empirical experience, can not only
enrich translation science but also help translators in their practical activities.
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Xorijiy lingvistika va lingvodidaktika
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Зарубежная лингвистика
и лингводидактика
–
Foreign Linguistics and Linguodidactics
Issue
–
2
№
2 (2024) / ISSN 2181-3701
90
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