GENDER-SENSITIVE LANGUAGE IN COMMUNICATIVE DISCOURSE AS A MECHANISM OF NOMINATIVE JUSTICE AND DISCURSIVE VISIBILITY

Abstract

The article provides a linguopragmatic interpretation of gender-sensitive language as a multidimensional semiotic phenomenon that integrates the nominative, word-formational, pragmatic, cognitive, semiotic and discourse-institutional parameters of contemporary Ukrainian-language communication. The analytical focus is placed on strategies of rejecting sexist and discriminatory language forms, making women visible through feminitives and paired nominations, and neutralising gender marking in communicative situations where gender is not a semantically relevant feature. The article substantiates that gender-sensitive language functions not merely as a stylistic recommendation, editorial technique or etiquette norm, but as a discursive practice capable of transforming the mode of address, the structure of participation, the symbolic visibility of social actors, the persuasive potential of the message and the ethical legitimacy of public interaction. The theoretical and methodological basis of the study is formed by the ideas of gender linguistics, pragmatics, critical discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, semiotics and communication studies, represented by the works of Robin Lakoff, Deborah Cameron, Dale Spender, Jennifer Coates, Janet Holmes, Sara Mills, John L. Austin, John R. Searle, H. Paul Grice, Erving Goffman, Roman Jakobson, Dell Hymes, M. A. K. Halliday, Norman Fairclough, Teun A. van Dijk, Ruth Wodak, Gunther Kress, Theo van Leeuwen, James W. Carey, Stuart Hall, Robert T. Craig and Jürgen Habermas. The research material is drawn from public media, educational, official, PR-oriented and digital texts of the contemporary Ukrainian-language space, in which gender-marked and gender-sensitive ways of nomination, address and representation of social roles are recorded. Particular attention is paid to feminitives as morphologically normative and socially significant linguistic units that expand the Ukrainian linguistic worldview, strengthen the professional representation of women and deconstruct androcentric models of public discourse. The scientific novelty of the study is reinforced by two original visual models: a conceptual scheme of the functioning of gender-sensitive language in communicative discourse and a communicative-discursive model of gender-sensitive language, which systematises the interrelation between the communicative situation, strategic choice, linguistic mechanisms, cognitive framing, pragmatic effect and discursive result. It is demonstrated that gender-sensitive language is a mechanism of nominative justice, discursive visibility and symbolic resistance to androcentric practices of linguistic representation.