Figurative Acceptions regarding Gender Discrimination

Abstract

Taking as a starting point the hypothesis that culture is realized in language, we can consider that everything which different generations have been accumulating takes shape in language. This fact has served to reveal that if society changes, language has to reflect this change. This reflection is best shown in the lexicon, which develops according to the use individuals make of their own language. Academicians qualify the meaning of some words and even introduce new terms obliged by the discursive linguistic reality. In this paper, we have analyzed the use of the semantic label ‘figurative meaning’ with gender discrimination in several dictionaries –academic and usage-based ones–. The exhaustive analysis of the corpus has allowed us to draw revealing conclusions, not only on the academicians’ use of the register ‘figurative’, but also on the possible change of mind they have undergone regarding gender discrimination.