"Courting Is Like Trading Horses, You Have to Keep Your Eyes Open" : Gender-Related Proverbs in a Peasant Society in Northern Sweden
Proverbs offer insights into normative symbolic systems of mean- ing. In this article, proverbs collected in Northern Sweden that mirrors an older agrarian environment are studied with a specific subset of such a normative meaning system in focus: masculinity and femininity. The analysis is centered...
Published in: | Journal of Northern Studies |
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Main Author: | |
Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
Language: | English |
Published: |
Umeå universitet, Institutionen för språkstudier
2012
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-64364 https://doi.org/10.36368/jns.v6i2.717 |
Summary: | Proverbs offer insights into normative symbolic systems of mean- ing. In this article, proverbs collected in Northern Sweden that mirrors an older agrarian environment are studied with a specific subset of such a normative meaning system in focus: masculinity and femininity. The analysis is centered on three important domains of human experience: The Marriage Market, The Household and The Sexuality. It is argued that the gender conceptions found in the proverbs form a system of gender hegemony, with hierarchically superior masculinity and hierarchically subordinate femininity. Furthermore, a possible cultural model found in the proverbs, that of The Successful Household, is out- lined and discussed. |
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