Linguistic picture of woman in French and Serbian

Abstract

This study examines the similarities and differences regarding the perception of woman between university students in France and Serbia. The method of discrete free associations was used to reconstruct and compare models of the linguistic picture of woman in the two language communities in order to explore the extent to which these pictures reflect properties observed across languages (i.e., universal) and the extent to which they are language specific. The results show that the relationship between the primary response and the stimulus in French is antonymous (woman-man), whereas the primary response given by Serbian students indicates the stability of the concept of mother in the Serbian language and culture. Nevertheless, the conceptual classification of the responses suggests that the linguistic picture of woman in French and Serbian expresses shared stereotypic beliefs about women.