Gender representation in monolingual German, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese dictionaries: A feminist critical analysis of dictionary entries related to professions

Authors

  • Giselly Oliveira de Andrade Universidade Estadual do Ceará - UECE
  • Gislene Lima Carvalho Universidade da Integração Internacional da Lusofonia Afro-Brasileira - UNILAB
  • Romana Castro Zambrano Universidade Federal de Sergipe PNPD/CAPES

Abstract

Despite the social changes aimed at establishing gender equality initiated by feminist movements in the 1960s, patriarchal structures persist in many societies. Often, inequality can be noticed in the world of labor, which is dominated in certain areas by a specific gender. Assuming that language norms and discourse do not only reflect our social reality, but also constitute it, in this paper we perform a discourse analysis of the representation of gender in dictionary entries related to various professions. Having in mind that sociocultural differences are manifested in language use, we opted for a comparative analysis considering dictionaries in three languages: in Brazilian Portuguese, the Mini-dicionário Aurélio de Língua Portuguesa; in Spanish, the Diccionario de la Lengua Española; and in German, the Duden online dictionary. Theoretically and methodologically, the study is primarily driven by the Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA), as well as by current thoughts in Lexicology and Lexicography. Thus, the paper presents a transdisciplinary analysis of the dictionary entries and their related definitions from various points of view. Overall, the results revealed the prevalence of a male perspective in the dictionary entries, demonstrating that Lexicography contributes to the (re)production of power relations marked by patriarchy.

Keywords: dictionaries, social genders, profession, Critical Discourse Analysis.

Author Biographies

Giselly Oliveira de Andrade, Universidade Estadual do Ceará - UECE

Graduada em Direito pela UNIFOR - Universidade de FortalezaPós-Graduação Lato Sensu, curso de Especialização, em Direito Internacional pela UNIFOR - Universidade de FortalezaGraduanda em Letras/Inglês pela UECE - Universidade Estadual do Ceará

Gislene Lima Carvalho, Universidade da Integração Internacional da Lusofonia Afro-Brasileira - UNILAB

Mestre em Linguística pela Universidade Federal do Ceará - UFC

Doutora em Linguística Aplicada pela Universidade Estadual do Ceará - UECE

Professora da Universidade da Integração Internacional da Lusofonia Afro-Brasileira - UNILAB

Romana Castro Zambrano, Universidade Federal de Sergipe PNPD/CAPES

Especialização em Professora de Alemão como Língua Estrangeira e Segunda Língua pela Universidade Heinrich-Heine em Düsseldorf (Alemanha)

Magister Artium (M.A.) em Filologia Românica, Linguística Alemã e Estudos Anglófonos pela Universidade Heinrich-Heine em Düsseldorf (Alemanha)

Doutora em Linguística Românica pela Universidade Heinrich-Heine em Düsseldorf (Alemanha)

Pós-doutoranda em Letras da Universidade Federal de Sergipe – UFS

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Published

2017-06-21

How to Cite

Andrade, G. O. de, Carvalho, G. L., & Castro Zambrano, R. (2017). Gender representation in monolingual German, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese dictionaries: A feminist critical analysis of dictionary entries related to professions. Calidoscópio, 15(3), 433–442. Retrieved from https://www.revistas.unisinos.br/index.php/calidoscopio/article/view/cld.2017.153.03

Issue

Vol. 15 No. 3 (2017): September/December

Section

Articles

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