The name of the woman

Irina Levontina and Irina Fufaeva about how feminity change the Russian language

Sergey Medvedev: The future occurs in our eyes in Russian. New feminities are more and more widely used - "author", "poet", "president". In some, they cause sympathy, in others, the guardians of the linguistic norm, on the contrary, irritation or even hatred. Why can't we agree on feminity? Does the Russian language change from them? Will gender equality in the language to gender equality in life lead?

The future occurs in our eyes in Russian

Correspondent: The topic of feminity is increasingly discussing in Russia and the world. In the last decade, a wave of feminism has forced to reconsider the traditional language rules, taking into account the representativeness of a woman in society. Many girls are signed by "author", "journalists", "directors" and so on. The most anger is the feminity from the so -called "fighters for the purity of the language." Feminitives cause rejection of bureaucrats, although they can be understood: have one designation, for example, professions, is always easier than two. Indignation can still be caused by a habit: for example, a “athlete” sounds familiar for many, and some “editor” is no longer.

Video version of the program

Recently, many no longer notice how feminity is used in household speech, without giving this neither negative nor positive shades. Ten years ago, those who were against the "author", "psychotherapist" and others are now calmly using them.

Some women do not like feminity at all and cause rejection

Choosing how to mean yourself is a matter of an individual person. For example, the feminists, doctor, doctor, librarian and “secretary” cause a negative attitude among many women; This can be associated with the suffixes of “Sha” and “ka”, which are simply unfinished, and in this case, to some extent, derogatory. And some women do not like feminity at all and cause rejection, and they are more familiar to designate themselves as a “poet”, “builder”, “commandant” and so on.

Sergey Medvedev: We are visiting Irina Levontina , leading researcher at the Russian Language Institute named after V.V. Vinogradova RAS .

In some cases, you can use the gender neutral word: say, "secretary"? The "secretary" will clearly be derogatory.

Irina Levontina: Each word has a separate story. You will not say "my daughter is a student." Or "Elena Obraztsova - a singer" - no one will say also. Still, there are completely neutral and even mandatory feminities. Some feminities are absolutely familiar and have long been rooted in the language. By the way, the word "poet" was used by Zhukovsky.

Sergey Medvedev: But it went out of use.

Irina Levontina: Yes, it did not fix it. But this is normal: the words go, come, return.

You can reason in different ways. People can say: by using feminitatives, you thereby emphasize that I am not a real poet, but a poetess. Both Tsvetaeva and Akhmatova, and many others did not like the word "poetess", and the word "poet" rarely likes.

There are completely neutral and even mandatory feminities

For example, I enjoy calling myself a linguist, but it seems to many that there is something derogatory in this: why do you emphasize gender identification, it is important what kind of specialist you are. And when a person does not use feminity, now they are predominantly reason like this: why do you ignore my gender identity? Why do you want to pretend that I am almost like a man?

Sergey Medvedev: But the trend still goes to phenymites?

Irina Levontina: Now - yes. Say, the student publication DOXA , which has now been transplanted , systematically uses feminity. When I spoke in court in the case of Yegor Zhukov , Doxa wrote: an expert there was something ... There was no discussion further, there was only a discussion on the use of the feminitic "expert". In the end, I could not stand it and wrote: listen, but nothing more important here? The person will be imprisoned now, and the most important thing is what suffix?!

Irina Levontina

Language is a means of communication. No language units have value on their own: it is important that a person puts it in it. It is clear that DOXA does not put any derogatory into this, but puts some general idea that it is correct not to use gender neutral words, but to identify the floor, because otherwise it belittles women if they are adjusted to the masculine standard.

Sergey Medvedev: The language is not gender neutral, the gender is originally spelled out in the language. And the language, if we take it in historical development, is still a means of male dominance, a reflection of the patriarchal world. All word forms, pronouns, one way or another, are imprisoned for the leadership of a man.

Irina Levontina: The language reflects everything that is in life. In particular, it reflects those long centuries when Patriarchate reigned to one degree or another.

Sergey Medvedev: Do we need to change this? I see that English, especially liberal, academic English, a few steps ahead. I will never write "everyone should know," I will write: everyone and each should know. A generic of a person is a man. In Russian, this is not yet written, but in Slavic languages a person is always a man.

Irina Levontina: Although in Ukrainian, for example, it is a "people", a feminine word.

Sergey Medvedev: Do we need to emphasize gender diversity every time?

No language units have value on their own: it is important that a person invests in it

Irina Levontina: The language belongs to us all, no one has monopolies. You may not need it, but for many this is important, and there are more and more such people. Life is moving. Maybe this will cease to be so important further, which means that those new feminities that have time to gain a foothold will remain in the language, and those that will not have time will not remain.

Sergey Medvedev: Probably now it is very ideologized. Critical people can say: here it is - new ethics, already reached the tongue! Is this really new ethics?

Irina Levontina: Generally speaking, there is no obligatory connection between feminism, eco -active, tolerant attitude to LGBT, and so on, but there is such a package thinking when it is all in one heap. If a person actively uses feminity, then he is associated immediately with all this bunch of new phenomena. Therefore, people are wary of this, it seems to them that all this in the package immediately drags the breakdown of traditional values.

And on the other hand, this new ethics, like many new proselytic ideologies, is quite aggressive. A person for saying something wrong, they begin to delete, boycott how happened to Joan Rowling, who did not speak in trend, how almost happened to Scarlett Johansson, who wanted to play a transgender man and was figuratively expressed, terribly beaten by stones for the proceedings: how can she not be a transgender? Any thought can be brought to the point of absurdity.

But such passions are actually not bad, it means that the language is alive. The worst for the language is automatism when we speak without contributing, without hesitation. And such discussions, which sometimes even take unpleasant forms, nevertheless indicate that people are attentive to the language, that it is important to them.

Such passions are actually not bad, it means that the language is alive

By the way, in the case of feminitations, I am still professionally pleasant to the stormy surge of word formation. This story shows: there are not just some words with some suffixes and prefixes, but this is an acting living model, from these bricks you can always make something new, and not only to shy existing words. You can compose, create, argue about which suffix is better, is it good, for example, the “Sha” suffix, or due to the fact that he had a meaning, as in the word “general”-the wife of the general, other meanings were slightly blocked.

Sergey Medvedev: I have friends in international schools in Europe and America, and they are taught that, as there is the third floor, people who do not want to be genderly defined, there is the same form in the language. Suppose the writer’s gender is unknown, and we write: "They are a writer, and they wrote this book."

Irina Levontina: In Russian, this is also. The pronoun "they" was used in the 19th century, as the use of a plural for politeness in relation to a higher.

Sergey Medvedev: The culturalist of Oksana Moroz discusses the role of feminity.

Oksana Frost

Oksana Frost: the question of how common the feminity in written or oral speech are very dependent on the community that we look at. In the public sphere, especially in the one that concerns the discussion about social problems, feminity is gradually becoming more acceptable, and not always by default, but the question of questioning about whether we use feminity in relation to a certain person becomes acceptable. That is, we can ask: with a public representation, you can call you a journalist or journalist, director or director?

I believe that this is a correct approach: feminitations do not need to be imposed as an obligation, but you must ask how people would like to imagine themselves. So I always imagine as a culturologist, although some of my readers periodically try to come up with some feminities that, in my opinion, sound funny. I ask you not to call me culturally, because there is a certain profession. In my opinion, such inventing feminity in this case, to a very large extent, pursues worldview political motifs, that is, we specifically want to seduce that I am a "sociology" or "anthropologist".

Feminitives do not need to be imposed as an obligation, but you need to ask how people would like to represent themselves

Often people who call themselves so work in research areas, for which work with Gender’s themes is very important. And I very rarely meet arguments about whether feminity of female mathematicians to use: perhaps because for mathematics the analysis of the language and methods of self-replacement is not as important as for social humanitarian knowledge associated with the methods of describing the world.

Sergey Medvedev: Irina Fufaeva , a researcher at the Laboratory of Sociolinguistics of the Russian State University, author of the book "What are women. Feminitivas: history, device, competition" joins us. Irina, are you author or author?

Irina Fufaeva: I'm definitely not an author, I don't really like such replacements. There was almost two hundred years the word "Author": I am ready to be a author, it is not difficult for me.

Sergey Medvedev: Explain how to deal with different suffixes - “Sha”, “ka”, “sa”. They are all situational, or are there any separate suffixes that still carry a derogatory shade?

Irina Fufaeva

Irina Fufaeva: Firstly, in the Russian language there is really an abyss of these suffixes of femininity. Secondly, according to subtle rules, they join the basics. It is very important what the basis ends with. The suffixes of the "jig", "nitsa", which worked in the 17th century, work now. Automatically arise "PRAR", "driver", and no longer. The suffixes “KA”, “Sha” often serve the borrowed words: “Author”, “Musician”, “Director”, “Revolutionary”, “Democrat”, “Theaterup”. The flow of borrowings poured into Peter's time, including the names of professions and various other names of people for whom there were no paired suffixes, they do not have Russian suffix. There was a chance for a previously rare suffix "KA", which began to serve these foundations. This suffix began to concern to borrowings to "East" - "Harfist", "Pianist" - and we do not hear any humility here, because the suffix "East" says that this is a person.

Sergey Medvedev: What about the doctor? "Young doctor"?

"Judge", "colleague", "old" are words of a common kind, and here we do not need feminitations

Irina Fufaeva: Just as with a “judge”, “colleague”, “headman” are words of a common kind, and here we do not need feminitations, except in indirect cases. "The Irkutsk doctor was awarded" - it is impossible, so to speak, but they already say so, they use the word "doctor" in indirect cases. The word "doctor" overcame this framework, unlike many other words.

Sergey Medvedev: Irina, you have a book "Honest Word" . Are there any male correlates from the female profession? There are purely female professions - a fortuneteller, a nurse. There is no word "fortuneteller", but "a site" is a little different.

Irina Levontina: The movie "Enemy Nannies": There was this story with the "Nanny". There was a story with a “milkmaid” when they came up with a “milkmaid”. Of course, there is the same situation, it’s just less common. This is how many feminities look derogatory, as well as “ballerun” (from the “ballerina”), therefore they use the word “dancer”.

Sergey Medvedev: When preparing for this broadcast, I found a completely wonderful site: "Feminizer 2.0" . You can introduce any word - and get feminity. Let's try: “linguist”: “linguistkin”, “linguist”, “linguistess”, “linguistics”, “linguisty”.

Irina Levontina: Apparently, linguists and linguists did not attract here, because some non -working, wrong models are used there.

Sergey Medvedev: What do I personally take out for myself from this conversation, besides the fact that the language is not a cabinet with cards, but a living ecosystem that reacts to Wednesday, to new social and anthropological shifts? This is another question about communication. We must say as it would be pleasant to your interlocutor or interlocutor.

Irina Levontina: But this is a very radical point of view: such amazing.

Language is not a cabinet with cards, but a living ecosystem

Sergey Medvedev: If it is important for my interlocutor or interlocutor that I, say, say “in Ukraine”, and not “in Ukraine”, or that I write “Tallinn” with two “n”, and not with one, then I do so.

Irina Levontina: And if your interlocutors do not like what you say "in Peredelkino", but to say just like that, but it is very annoying many, will you also adapt?

Sergey Medvedev: For me, this is a matter of group rights. If this concerns gender, national, racial or some other identity, I always respect the identity of my visa. And I stand for openness, dialogue, communication.