Negative Stereotypes about Women in Gender-Marked Phrases of Rožaje’s Speech

Abstract

In this paper, negative stereotypes about women are analysed in the gendered idioms of Rožaje’s speech. The phrases, as part of an organic idiom, provide an insight into the ways of conceptualising the female gender. By analysing them, we try to show how sociocultural perception of women is reflected in language. The research was conducted on a corpus of sixty idioms, which refer to women and their position in the sociocultural model, collected by field research in the Rožaje speaking area during 2023 and 2024. The phrases contain an image of women based on stereotypes and prejudices, which arose from a male-centric or deformed social representation. The aim of this paper is to determine examples of negative gender stereotypes related to women in the idioms of Rožaje’s speech, which have the potential to shape the collective image of women. Semantic analysis of the corpus was carried out by interpreting the phrases motivated by stereotypes. The phrases are analysed according to the type of the stereotype they represent, and the findings are presented in several subsections in the paper. The research shows that, in phraseology, women are represented as intellectually limited, talkative, quarrelsome and argumentative, reckless and unreliable, promiscuous and immoral, as well as evil, cunning, and deceitful beings. It is also concluded that they are presented as emotionally and physically weaker beings, who are in general inferior and subordinate. The results of the analysis indicate that phraseology reflects pronounced misogyny and sexist patterns in the perception of the female gender.