Etymological Memory of a Word in Designating Sociocultural Stereotype

Abstract

The article presents the semantic history of the word flapper that denotes social stereotype of American culture. Being a multifaceted phenomenon of semantic cognition, a sociocultural stereotype presents a condensed and coded information that develops on the background of a cultural context. The semantic analysis from diachronic perspective sets up a correspondence of Latin origin of the word flapper with Indo-European stem that produced a number of words in Germanic languages. The cognate words of related languages reveal conformity of negative connotations determined by attitude to human weakness in different forms of its manifestations. This presumes historically determined negative connotation of the word flapper. The initial designation was motivated by kinetic characteristic of the object – a vertical movement. The meaning “a young and daring American girl of the 1920s” of the word flapper was semantically motivated. As it was stated, at the moment of designation, youth and immaturity of a girl were conceived of a fledgling image, that traditionally symbolizes inexperience of a youngster. This zoomorphic metaphor acts as the source of categorization of a cultural and social phenomenon “Flapper”.

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