”Akka tieltä kääntyköhön”.

Kielen, ajattelun ja arvojen sukupuolittuneisuudesta Lönnrotin Kalevalassa ja nykysuomessa

• Marjut Pettersson Mynämäen Laurin koulu

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30665/av.74983

Abstract

”Let a Hag Turn off the Road”. The Gendering of Language, Cognition and Values in Lönnrot’s Kalevala and Present-Day Finnish

Are deeply entrenched cultural values embedded in our conceptual system? This article gives one answer to the question by
analysing conceptual metaphors in Kalevala (1849) and present-day Finnish. It discusses how we conceptualise central pairs of opposition, such as good/bad and important/meaningless in Finnish culture. According to the cognitive metaphor theory developed by George Lakoff, Mark Johnson and Mark Turner, meaning and rationality are based on bodily experience. My aim is to show that they are also related to gender.

I maintain that our conceptual system is closely tied to patriarchal values and venture to suggest that the relation is to some extent even more evident in current everyday Finnish than in Kalevala. I point out that there are now more conceptual metaphors based on gender dichotomies and that in Kalevala there are also metaphors that stem from women’s bodily experience. In other words, we can find alternative conceptual metaphors in the past. Such metaphors are particularly useful if we are to change one of today’s most fundamental cultural values more is better, which entails a serious threat to our well-being and natural resources.
(The Kalevala quote is from Keith Bosleys’s translation.)