The Discourse on Gender Identity in Contemporary Russia: An Introduction with a Case Study in Russian Gender Linguistics

Conchita Wurst's 2014 victory in the Eurovision Song Contest was a significant discursive moment which revealed the current tensions between postgenderism and traditionalism in contemporary Russia. This case also made clear just how far gender and sexuality are instrumentalised and politicised--not [...]
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Conchita Wurst's 2014 victory in the Eurovision Song Contest was a significant discursive moment which revealed the current tensions between postgenderism and traditionalism in contemporary Russia. This case also made clear just how far gender and sexuality are instrumentalised and politicised--not least in creating Russians' self-perception and constructing a Russian national identity--and how massively notions of identity impact on Russian everyday life. The monograph focuses on the discussion of gender and sexuality in Russia following the 2014 event and investigates the relation between discourse and identity. Above all, it is concerned with the function of language in identity construction, and in the creation and demarcation of spaces. In this context, Dr. Scheller-Boltz's study not only analyses lexicological and word-formation peculiarities, but also provides some revealing research findings about specific language use, including certain argumentation strategies. The monograph begins with a detailed introduction to notions of identity and concludes with some critical remarks on Russian gender and queer linguistics.