The image of a woman in texts of the pre-national period of the Russian language development (based on “Russkaya Pravda” and “Domostroy”): linguistic representations

Abstract

The article considers the image of a woman in the texts of the pre-national period of the Russian language development as part of the system of ideas about women in the Russian linguistic picture of the world. The material for the study was “Russkaya Pravda”, the business style text from the 11th-12th centuries, and “Domostroy”, the text of the proper literary style of the 16th century. Due to the insufficient study of the written monuments, discussed in the article from the standpoint of gender linguistics and linguoculturology, for a modern person, the image of a woman is narrow and stereotypical– the woman was oppressed by everyday life, subordinated to her husband in everything, she had no rights. However, this is not entirely true, her image and roles in society were wider and more diverse; therefore, the purpose of this work is to identify the features of the linguistic representations of women in the texts of “Russkaya Pravda” and “Domostroy”, reflecting the cultural and everyday realities of Rus'. The analysis of the written monuments shows that in the text of “Russkaya Pravda” only 10 lexemes are used to nominate a woman, and in “Domostroy” we identify 44 lexemes. The linguistic and cultural analysis of the nominations shows that the most frequent incarnations of a woman are the images of a wife and mistress of the house, a mother, which are manifested in connection with a man and her subordination to him. However, in “Domostroy” there are references to women of various types of activities and social status, which indicates the growing importance of women in the life of society by the 16th century.