Language Construction of Reality in the German Tabloid Press/on Materials of BILD Newspaper/

From the moment of their birth, a person's life is determined by their sex. Goroshko wanted to find out why this difference is so striking, why society is so determined to sustain it, and how it can persist even when certain national or behavioural stereotypes are erased. She believes there are both social and biological differences between men and women, and set out to analyse these distinctions as they are manifested in language. Certain general characteristics can be identified. Males tend to write with less fluency, to refer to events in a verb phrase, to be time-oriented, to involve themselves more in their references to events, to locate events in their personal sphere of activity, and to refer less to others. Goroshko therefore concludes that the male is more active, more ego-involved in what he does and less concerned about others. Women were more fluent, referred to events in a noun-phrase, were less time-oriented, tended to be less involved in their event references, located events within their interactive community, and referred more to others. They spent much more time discussing personal and domestic subjects, relationship problems, family, health and reproductive matters, weight, food and clothing, men, and other women. Computer analysis showed that female speech was substantially more emotional, using hyperbole, metaphor, comparisons, epithets, ways of enumeration, interjections, rhetorical questions and exclamations. The level of literacy was higher in female speech, and women made fewer grammatical and spelling mistakes in written texts. Goroshko believes that her findings have relevance beyond the linguistic field. When working on anonymous texts she has been able to decide on the sex of the author and so believes that her research may even be of benefit to forensic science.

Women's Dress as an Expression of Social Development in Bohemia in the Years 1850-1950"

The nature of Czech fashion was shaped both by the social environment - not particularly wealthy, modest, influenced by the Protestant tradition - and by efforts towards women's emancipation. This resulted in a rejection of unnecessarily quirky elements in fashion as early as the 1870s. As far as style was concerned, Czech fashion followed the Viennese, German and French, and from the 1890s also the English models, and also found inspiration in contemporary aesthetic principles. National political ambitions appeared in inspiration drawn from folk costume. Feminist struggles and sports paved the way for the acceptance of reformist and practical dress, in which Czech designers took an active part. These trends reached a peak around 1929, with the design of a complete "civilised" women's apparel, based on trouser suits. The peak periods in the development of Czech fashion were the 1920s and 1930s, when a number of top fashion houses were established and both fashion and society magazines with original fashion designs, photographs and articles were published. These produced a specifically Czech fashion, showing French inspiration but opting rather for an English style, which was artistically advanced, practical, luxurious and democratic. After 1948, fashion too fell under the centralised control of the communist regime.