Search

The English language uses dual gender which is an umbrella term for including fe/males, e.g. student, doctor, teacher, president, minister, opponent, etc. In Slavic languages, e.g. in the Slovak language it works differently. Suffixes reflect grammatical and natural gender of lexemes referring to occupation, activity or the position of a person in the public sphere. And so the gender is recognized by means of a masculine or feminine suffix. In effort to become economical with language and to avoid misunderstandings as well, generic masculine (GM), i.e. preferring dominant masculine gender whereever possible, was introduced in the past. It used to be working for some time without doubting or questioning GM. However, this is no longer true as far as females realize that there is no real existence without their real presence in language. And so what is inherently present in English due to its typological type of language known as analytical, must be reconsidered in some Slavic languages due to their flexive nature. This was investigated by several means: approach of professional language workers for dictionary, appearances of frequencies in the Slovak National Corpus, Google and Census which took place in 2011 in Slovakia. The Census reveals the real numbers of fe/males in their public positions (i.e. occupations and jobs). The analysis and further comparison bring both relevant information and uncover discrepancies between language and reality. It turns out that reality is manipulated via language which has appropriate means to include both genders in public discourse in order to avoid gender stereotypes which are present in more or less sexist society. Remark: In the paper Slovak examples are left without specific Slovak signs in order to avoid misinterpretation by formal publishing mistakes and problems.

The paper captures a cross-section of the dynamics of the semiotic political linguistic landscape (PLL) in Banska Bystrica. The PLL is perceived as a linguistic landscape (LL) used for political purposes, i.e. the LL that is used to express a political stance in order to agitate, argue and defend specific politically attuned positions. The urban space contains reminiscences of the electoral struggle ahead of the 2022 local elections. The main objective was to analyse and compare chosen PLL with a time interval of one year. The author also notes the LL immediately after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in March 2022 and the reflection of these events in the semiotics of the LL. She confronts this spacial-temporal moment with the current state of affairs in March 2023. Through the methods of observation, description, analysis, and comparison, the author comes to conclusion about the misuse of the themes of war and war refugee and leavers for political reasons reflected in the LL semiotics. The research results show value clashes reflected by the layering of the studied signs, which are manifested by dialogicality and expressiveness often caused by the anonymity of their interlocutors. The study concludes that the dynamics of the LL narrative is strongly influenced by the state of war in the neighbouring country, not only in the static signs but also in the mobile signs found and examined in the LL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]