The power of gender from the communication perspective
The article concerns the problem of gender power understood as: 1 prevalence and/or domination of forms associated with one of the traditionally distinguished genders in the biological and cultural sense, both in the system and its textual and discursive implementations power in a narrow sense — purely linguistic, verbal; 2 imposition of certain attitudes and behaviours in broadly defined communication, resulting from the represented gender power in a broader sense — communicative, including mainly, though not exclusively, the non-verbal sense. The exponents of gender power can be found on a number of levels of language and communication: from the grammatical system, through e.g. the linguistic picture of the world, pragmatically conditioned areas, to various discourses of modern culture. The causes of gender power vary; they are associated mostly with historical grounding, as well as conventionalisation of communication forms and behaviour. In some situations e.g. artistic and scientific discourses, media communication the power of gender is weakened in favour of gender fluidity, and then maybe even postgenderism.