Classic English drama: gender peculiarities of characters’ speech

Abstract

The article under consideration is devoted to the peculiarities of language and speech behavior of the charac ters of the classic English drama. Approaching the problem of differences in the speech of men and women from the standpoint of the theory of linguistic personality and taking into account the social conditionality of these differences, the concept of gender is proposed to be understood as dynamic, culturally determined social charac teristics of men and women - carriers of different world views, which are reconstructed in their main features based on linguistic means of both oral and written speech. Relying on the theoretical foundations of gender linguistics, the article's authors identify the fundamental features of the language and behavior of the main characters of classic English drama. The article identifies and systematizes the gender peculiarities of communicative behavior that playwrights give to male and female characters when depicting situations of informal intergender communication in English dramatic works, as well as lexical and stylistic gender differences in the verbal behavior of characters. General scientific methods (analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, generalization) and linguistic methods are used in the study.