ANTHROPOCENTRICITY IN THE SPHERE OF PROFESSIONAL IDENTIFICATION: THE CATEGORY OF GENDER

Abstract

The article treats a problem of professional identification in within the framework of grammatical and socio-cultural gender in English and Russian. The evolution of the grammatical category of gender is considered in terms of comparative study, as well as its present status and correlation with the socio-cultural notion of gender. The analysis is done on the example of professions’ designation in two languages, their morphological and semantic similarities and differences are shown. The important result of the analysis is revealing the independent role of a grammatical caterory in the socio-cultural picture of the world that manifests different national gender perception in the Russian and English speaking world. Research of professional designations demonstrates the sustainability of traditional gender semantics in Russian due to the more durable morphological system in contrast to English, where the grammatical category of feminine/masculine gender was lost in the process of its evolution into an analytical language and was transformed into the so-called common gender. This modern notion of common gender is an important factor in self-identification and national awareness in the English speaking world.