The Use of Feminitives in Contemporary English and Russian

The present work is devoted to the use of feminitives and the problem of language representation of the gender category in modern media discourse. The investigation is intended to trace the trend of using a gender-fair language in the media space and find out how society relates to this phenomenon. The relevance of the research is attributable to the growing interest in the intention to be more politically correct and gender-tolerant in the media space. Also, the ongoing social changes and the need for women to be represented stimulate scholars to elucidate the issue of means of representing gender in a language. The increased activity of women in the areas of social life requires the emergence of new language units. In this regard, two trends of language changes are developing in the media sphere: gender neutralization and gender specification. The empirical basis of the study is the English- and Russian-language online publications that cover relevant socially significant issues and a wide range of problems. The materials are compared for two types of online editions: business media and entertaining media. The conclusion is drawn about the trends in the use of feminitives in socio-political publications and possible problems that impede the use of gender-marked expressions.