Genderspecific vocabulary with the component “man” / “woman” in English

The article aims to compare the usage of genderspecific vocabulary (GSV) with the component “man” / “woman” in dictionaries and mass media discourse. A comparative analysis of the meanings of linguistic units was performed using the material of the explanatory online dictionaries “Cambridge Dictionary” and “MerriamWebster Dictionary” to establish possible differences between the American and British diatopic varieties of the English language. A comparative analysis was carried out on the material of publications of electronic versions of the publications “The Guardian”, “The New York Times”, “The Sun” and “BuzzFeed News” to determine the specifics of genderspecific vocabulary functioning in mass media discourse. The study involved a number of parameters including time, frequency and style as the main research parameters as well as variance (British or American) and the category of the press (“highquality” or “popular”) as additional parameters. During the study, continuous and partial sampling (by automated keyword search), analysis of dictionary definitions, comparative analysis, contextual analysis, interpretative method and descriptive statistics techniques were used. The results indicate that the major part of GSV in American and British Press has no stylistic labels in the dictionaries whatsoever. GSVs labeled as “formal” and “literary” are used in “highquality” press rather than “popular” press no matter the time period. GSVs labeled as slang or informal were found not only in “popular” press but in “highquality” press as well. Oldfashioned GSV group was enlarged due to the tendency of gender political correctness in English that shifted certain GSVs into the “offensive” category.