Search published articles


Showing 4 results for Stereotypes


Volume 8, Issue 5 (12-2017)
Abstract

The language of tales includes a set of stereotypes including curses, tricks, courtesies, orisons, oaths, threats, comets etc.that have the cultural infrastructure and are very popular in the classic and folk literature making them marked. This foregrounding is an anthropological advantage that reflects the language, culture and lifestyle of people. The study of these materials as well as their syntax shows the difference in popular prose with popular texts, to say the prose of the popular texts is not exactly the same spoken language but a standard variant similar to the spoken and popular language. The purpose of the article is to demonstrate the use of linguistic stereotypes and their role in accepting these tales among people. Another advantage of this study is to investigate the continuous use of these stereotypes in the public's current language. The interpretations and terminology used in this work illustrate the adjacency of the present spoken Persian to the language of the past. This subject is so important in sociolinguistics.
Thus the main question of this study is: to what extent in classic popular texts these stereotypes such as curses, tricks, courtesies, orisons, oaths, threats, comets, idioms and axioms contribute to the writing on popular literature. Our hypothesis is that one of the aesthetic aspects and the effect of these texts and their popularity among the people is the same as the use of linguistic stereotypes. To arrive at the answer, among the stereotypes and linguistic materials, 46 texts of classical popular literature were selected and all the material was extracted, categorized and analyzed. The novelty of the article is to analyze and extract hundreds of stereotypes of texts and reflect their diversity in a meticulous way, as well as linguistic and literary analysis and sociology of these rich materials in language.
Our research showed that the curse in these texts fully reflects the ideology and religious beliefs of the speaker. Cursing, deceiving or swearing in the popular stories of the Safavid and Qajar dynasties indicated the fragility of the moral foundations and sometimes indicate cultural and social problems. The insults were the following: those signifying the madness and stupidity, debauchery, fanaticism, sexual-oriented assimilations, addressing the public with animals, religious, relating to fortune, the relationship of bad manners, obscenity, and ignorance and finally those referring to the ethnic and national insults. By looking at the insults, which are often based on the type and severity of people, as the bastard has the highest frequency, because it is very important in people’s religion and customs. The dog is impure in Islamic law and is used in abusive manner, but this is not the case in other cultures. False narratives are directly related to the luck and fortune of people’s deep thoughts and beliefs.
It is possible to pursue the traces of the curses in people’s lifestyle. For instance, to wash the dead, it was putting it on the bed. Atash be gur gereftan refers to the history of parents disinheriting his/her child and the tomb of a young catching fire in the era of the Prophet considered as a curse. As well as a religious discussion, this question has a social aspect. On the other hand, orisons often stem from the religious beliefs of the people. Some of these orisons and admirations are also used nowadays including “Khane –at abad” and some others are already outdated like? In Mozde Kafshe Shoma. One must keep in mind that illness and death have been prevalent in the past and that these orisons are often a kind of wish for the health of the audience. Orisons like Bala gardanat shavam comes from the common beliefs of the people and is often a means or an orison that causes someone to avoid evil.
Oaths are in the name of God, prophets, religions, celestial books, religious figures or beautiful manifestations of nature to the dignity and power of kings and elders of national mythology which are sometimes humoristic. There are many threats and rodomontade in the legendary battle scenes.
One of the linguistic and structural elements of Áyyār stories is their iterative and templatic propositions which give a certain meaning and are often a structural tool for temporal and spatial differentiation. Templatic propositions are initial, middle and final. Initial propositions are devoted to the opening of a story where the narrator’s name is inserted, or a narrator is described with features such as the scholar,  competent, philosopher,  Mobed, engineer and the peasant, with beautiful poetic phrases and figures of imagery, in particular Saj ‘. Sometimes the story begins with the Sâki-nâme. In these propositions, they are invited to hear or read a story, while those in the middle divide narrative plans and final proposals making a happy wish for the listener and the reader.
The allusions of folk myths can be divided into two categories known as familiar and complex: Familiar and complex ones and those which are rarely used today. The treasure of these myths is one of the main sources of study making us familiar with the spirit, language and thoughts of our ancestors. The application of these proverbs will make the space of history delicate and bring it closer to everyday conversations. Existing examples can be categorized into four general categories in a thematic context:
-            A) The world and the fortune: The world is full of joy and sorrow, bitter and sweet, never faithful to anyone, it must spend our time in joy, we must not disobey the world.
-            B) Social issues: The wealth solves most problems. Dervish is always facing diverse calamities. The characters such as acceleration, ignorance, lying, frivolity, and irreverence, desire for shamelessness, tragedy, laziness, boredom, greed and selfishness are seen as disrespectful and humiliating behavior. Unlike some ancient prose texts, unfortunately, in these proverbs there are also the series of patriarchal and anti-feminist ideas, and women are associated with disapproved and of course disoriented features like: The evil, discloser, unfruitful, idiot, housebound, techy, credulous, malicious, tricky, coward and ignorant.
-            C) Politics and government: Government is a blessing and a pleasant opportunity, and even if it is short-lived, it is sweet and desirable. In some respects, one can see the emphasis on adherence to principles and meritocracy.
-            D) Ethical advice: some of the axioms invite to caution and conservatism. To be moderate in all affairs is the condition of the reason, and people have been discouraged from extremism. Some others encourage the people to avoid laziness and total obedience and to be graceful of everyday life unique opportunities. Rhetoric has the attributes such as: bold, soft, warm, gentle, thoughtful and polite, perfect, immanent and relevant to public knowledge and understanding. With such a statement, one can benefit from the penetrating speech.
 


 

Volume 9, Issue 37 (3-2021)
Abstract

Proverbs reflect different aspects and angles of people’s lives including social-cultural concepts as if they were linguistic texts being focused by sociolinguistics. The present research is a descriptive-analytic study investigating the gender-related stereotypes in Turkish and Persian proverbs from the viewpoint of sociology of language. In this essay, 100 Turkish and Persian proverbs having gender-related stereotypes were selected and investigated through purposive sampling. This research intends to answer these questions: what type of gender-related stereotypes have been much more observed in Turkish and Persian proverbs? Which gender is more impressed by the gender-related stereotypes in Turkish and Persian proverbs? From the viewpoint of sociology of language, how does the utilization of the special gender-related stereotypes in Turkish and Persian proverbs represent the social status of each era? The results obtained from this study indicate that the gender-related stereotypes have been more frequently used in the proverbs related to the women than men. Furthermore, the ethical characteristics have been stated and used more than other characteristics in the Turkish and Persian proverbs. The concepts stated in the proverbs indicate the gender bias (gender discrimination), and ignorance of women and women's low social status in popular culture in the past. Besides, there are a lot of similarities between the cultures of Turks and Iranians regarding the utilization of gender-related stereotypes in the society due to the proximity of cultures and the borders of Iran and Turkey.
Literature Review
Branch (2005) in a research entitled “Teaching the Old Testament Book of Proverbs” has investigated the Christians’ Old Testament Book in terms of the existence of proverb-like gender-related stereotypes. Beck (2005) in a research entitled “Proverb Speaks Louder than Words” is to investigate the specific communication characteristic of the proverbs playing an important role in the creation of the ambiguity (lie). Heydari (2013), in a research entitled “Investigating the Position of Women in Kurdish Popular Culture”, has investigated the position of woman in Kurdish popular culture (emphasizing the Kurdish proverbs and sayings).     Aminolroaya et al. (2015), in a research entitled “Investigating the Characteristics Attributed to Women in Persian Proverbs”, has investigated, separated, and segregated the proverbs being somehow related to women through using the qualitative content analysis; then, they investigated the women’s psychological and physical characteristics, the emotional and ethical categories as well as the women’s social and family relationships.
Research Questions and Objectives 
In the present study, the researcher is to investigate and analyze gender-related stereotypes in Istanbul Turkish and Persian proverbs from the viewpoint of sociology of language; besides, the study is to investigate the lexicons in Istanbul Turkish and Persian proverbs based on the viewpoints being discussed in linguistic. In addition, it aims to investigate and analyze Istanbul Turkish and Persian proverbs from the viewpoint of gender linguistics and the social status discourse analysis considering the usage of special vocabularies in Istanbul Turkish and Persian proverbs; it is to specify the similarities and differences between the proverbs’ social and cultural context in these two cultures in terms of language and gender.
Here, the study is to answer these questions: to what extent are the gender-related stereotypes utilized in Istanbul Turkish and Persian proverbs? What type of gender-related stereotypes have been much more observed in Istanbul Turkish and Persian proverbs? And, what gender has been impressed more by these proverbs?  
Results
In the present research, we investigated 100 Persian proverbs as the research samples and the following results have been obtained regarding the utilization of gender-related stereotypes in the proverbs. Among the gender-related stereotypes investigated, the ethical characteristics with 52 usages have had the highest frequency to be utilized, and the economic characteristics with 13 usages have had the highest frequency; this indicates the greater importance of cultural and ethical issues among the Iranians and Persian culture. Besides, gender-related stereotypes were much more used for women than men with the frequency of 74. Therefore, gender-related stereotypes in Persian proverbs have much more focus on the women.  However, among the 100 Istanbul Turkish proverbs investigated as the research samples, the ethical characteristics with 49 usages have had the highest frequency to be utilized, and the economic characteristics with 8 usages have had the highest frequency; this indicates the greater importance of cultural and ethical issues among the Turks. Besides, the gender-related stereotypes were much more used for women than men with the frequency of 68. Therefore, the gender-related stereotypes in Istanbul Turkish proverbs have much more focus on the women.  
Discussion and Conclusion
Studies have shown that the physical characteristics were more described in the Istanbul Turkish and Persian proverbs with regards to women. In these proverbs, the physical characteristics have been considered very important for women so that these characteristics have been considered superior to other human characteristics. On the contrary, there have been fewer proverbs regarding men’s physical characteristics. Property and asset have been considered a positive feature in Istanbul Turkish and Persian proverbs and this property is just considered men’s rights; only men are authorized to utilize that property and only men must meet the women’s financial needs. Furthermore, in Persian culture, those women who have not financial potentiality, especially the ones not affording to buy dowry, are humiliated and considered worthless. Considering the studies performed by other researchers in the fields of gender linguistics, and the use and origins of proverbs, it has been specified that gender-related stereotypes state some exaggerated features for people with different gender, age, and occupation; besides, in Iranian and non-Iranian proverbs, the gender-related proverbs state the women’s low position in different societies. The present research has obtained some results similar to that of others being achieved in other studies.
References
Aminolroaya, P., Sharifi. Sh., & Elyasi, M. (2015). Investigating the characteristics attributed to women in Persian proverbs. Research in Persian Language & Literature, 34, 89-120
Beck, W. (2005). Proverb speaks louder than words: folk wisdom in art, culture, folklore, history, literature and mass media. Peter Lang Publications.
Beck, W. (2005). Proverb speaks louder than words: folk wisdom in art, culture, folklore, history, literature and mass media. Peter Lang Publications.
Heydari, S. (2013). Investigating the position of women in Kurdish popular culture. MA Thesis, Payam Noor University, West Tehran Center, Iran.


Volume 13, Issue 4 (10-2022)
Abstract

In this paper, with the approach of discourse analysis from two structural and thematic perspectives, we try to classify the structures of jokes in Persian and Russian language based on the views of Robert Liu by dividing it into two categories: linguistic and non-linguistic, and on Karasik’s theory based on the classification of semantic and semiotics analysis by inductive method. The purpose of this study is to identify the language tools for jokes production based on linguistic and semantic structures in both Russian and Persian, due to the differences in the lexical structure of Russian as a Fusional language and Persian as a Agglutinative language. The present aims to test the hypothesis of the existence of language diversity of Russian joke production tools and the effect of cultural and value components in the production of non-linguistic jokes. At the end of this study, grammatical jokes were identified with a variety of instrumental languages and in the non-linguistic category of gender, ethnic and political examples. The frequency of linguistic examples in two languages is significantly lower than the non-linguistic category, and gender and political examples have a clear maximum against other semantic subsets of jokes.
 The genre of humor in various forms such as fables and short stories has criticized and challenged the categories of life in its various political, economic, cultural, social and religious domains. This research has been done with the content and thematic analysis approach of satires based on the approach of discourse analysis from two structural and thematic perspectives, the body of jokes in Persian and Russian languages based on the views of Robert Liu1 is divided into two categories: linguistic and non-linguistic and Karasik theory. The purpose of this study is to identify the language of jokes production tools due to the differences in the lexical structure of Russian as an Fusional language and Persian as the combination of Fusional, Agglutinative and at syntactic level both are known as Analytical language. The research hypothesis is based on the existence of language diversity of Russian joke production tools with the maximum ratio against Persian language for the reasons mentioned earlier in the linguistic classification and the effect of cultural and value components in the production of non-linguistic jokes.
There are many different functions of humor, among which they can be attributed to entertainment, education, promotion of moral values, criticism and demanding reform in various issues The question arises, according to the structure of each language, which tool is common and which is specific? What is the maximum and minimum of each of them in these two languages? what are the similarities and differences between the function of humor in Iran and Russia? What is the frequency of humor considered by each of the two societies and in which category of humor.
 By analyzing samples of the field, it seems that humor is a tool to control power and endurance in a soft way and at a higher level to show the consciousness, creativity and culture of human societies. Scientific study of this issue can help in cultural, political and accurate translation of various texts, especially social texts. In this research, a confrontational-qualitative research method based on body analysis of more than 260 samples of jokes in Russian and 200 Persian jokes collected from cyberspace has been used. The selection of jokes, especially linguistic jokes in both languages, was very limited, and the Russian language selection reference site: http://new.gramota.ru/biblio/gostinaya/lingvisticheskie-anekdoty, and other sites for other keywords in this query was used. In Persian, from the sites: https://www.barkhat.news, https://namnak.com, https://www.pinterest.com, https://www.beytoote.com, it was possible to use both. Because in both Russian and Persian sections, the mentioned sites are organizationally controlled sites and they avoid including out-of-the-ordinary content.
The novelty of this study lies in the fact that by analyzing the linguistic structures, the semantic range of words in the morphology and syntax sections is determined and it helps translators and language learners in understanding abstract semantics.
Linguistic satires mock the rules of language and do not notice a particular person or social event, so they are far removed from social functions and provide more entertainment, and have had a similar pattern in Russian and Persian from the past to the present in:
***معلم: ناقل یعنی چی؟
 آقا اجازه : ناقل یعنی کسی که،  به سادگی قل نمیخورد و کلا با غلت زدن رابطه خوبی ندارد.
Teacher: What does carrier mean?
 Student: A carrier is someone who does not giggle easily and does not have a good relationship with rolling at all.
*** Если бы русские любили работать, они не назвали бы включатель, выключателем.
(If the Russians liked to work, they would not call a switch, a switch)
Russian humor refers to the prefix [Вы-], which means outside, and such meanings in combination with verbs of movement and the other verbs, in contrast to the prefix [В-], which means beginning, entering.
 
Social stereotypes are generally a standardized image of phenomena with various emotional aspects. These stereotypes are very resistant to change and the transition to new beliefs and a democratic society.
***خانم از شوهرش می
 پرسه: موقع ازدواج چه کسی منو به تو معرفی کرد؟
-      شوهر: چه میدونم دشمن زیاده.
*** The lady asks her husband: Who introduced me to you when for marrage?
Husband: I don’t know a there is lot of enemies.
***Гаишник останавливает машину, за рулём блондинка.
— Почему вы не включили свет в туннеле?
— Я из Ростова, откуда я знаю, где у вас тут в туннеле свет включается?!
*** The traffic cop stops the car, the blonde is driving.
- Why didn't you turn on the light in the tunnel?
- I'm from Rostov, how do I know where the light turns on in your tunnel ?!
This literary genre has undergone changes today. The purpose of recent productions is not to improve the situation compared to the past, but behind it is destruction, humiliation, devaluation, which is very bitter and biting. By examining the collected samples, the most frequently extracted axes can be selected in the following way:
1- Devaluation of the family institution and breaking educational taboos for young people.
2- Referring to gender inferiority;
3- The emergence of ethnic stereotypes;
4- Emergence of political stereotypes.
At the end of the study of humorous figures, the language of grammatical tools (linguistic) and in the non-linguistic category, the categories of sexuality, ethnicity and politics were identified in two languages. The frequency of linguistic examples is significantly lower in both languages than the non-linguistic category, and gendered and political examples have a clear maximum compared to other semantic subsets of jokes. According to the hypothesis of this research, it is appropriate for social decision makers to be aware of some of the negative effects of such satires that are unstoppable.




Zahra Montasseri, Mohammad Saber Khaghaninejad, Amirsaeid Moloodi,
Volume 27, Issue 4 (10-2020)
Abstract

Hegemonies imposed from sources of power have been an issue of investigation for many years. In recent years, media and movies have gained particular attention due to their society-affecting power. The present study explores how male and female characters are represented in American movies based on the Van Leeuwen’s (2008) social actor categorization. Hence, the researchers focus on the scripts of the movies available in fiction genre of COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English). A representative sample of words depicting each gender was chosen based on their frequencies, and accordingly, their collocations were extracted. The findings indicate that men and women representations were following stereotypical depiction of gender roles; while men tended to be associated with high-ranked jobs, positions, activities, and identification categories, women were shown to be passively linked with inferior features, low-income jobs, child-bearers, and sexual aspects. More specifically, women were mostly objectified through a patriarchal perspective. The results might shed light on the archetypical imposition of power from above and may pave the way for unbiased media where depths, not just the appearances, of characters are of greater significance.

Page 1 from 1