BACKGROUND OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN: OUR PROVERBS AND IDIOMS

Abstract

It is known that the proverbs and idioms help us to elicit information about socio-cultural structure, history and the way of life of a society. It is thought that proverbs and idioms carry a significant importance in formation of mankind’s standard of judgement. Because, it is a known fact that the language that is used and manner of discourse, in a long period of time, establish a ground for specific culture to be formed and transfer that culture to the next generations through families. It is seen within the context of this study that modernity considers human being as fetishism of Meta and degrade human being into the level of assets which feminists criticize severely and it is also seen that some proverbs and idioms marginalize women. To that end, the proverbs and idioms such as woman, girl, bride, avrat (an old usage for wife), dilber (an old usage for belle – beautiful woman)… etc. that are mentioned in the website of Turkish Language Society have been generally analyzed. Discrimination against women among sons and daughters, marginalizing in terms of physical differences and being belonged, deficiency in proportion to men, forcing to marry without asking their opinion, double standard, preconceived opinion, mentioning them together with animals, conceive them with ethical terms, desiring to have a boy… etc. The objective of this essay is to analyze whether the proverbs and idioms that are being transferred from mouth to mouth are behind the violence against women in Turkey which we see on the news every day and to call public attention to this. It is thought that the proverbs and idioms which are extant by being inherited from generation to generation are influential in violence against women. In a society, the creation and the transfer of the content of knowledge are done through rhetorical relation. This transfer is named “connecting a language to another”. This means using the language that has been developed by others historically and socially and benefiting from the historical and cultural accumulation that the language contains within itself. Language, containing the existing relations that are based on power, transfers the power based relation together with itself just because the knowledge producing and transferring feature of language. It may be considered that as proverbs and idioms are used very widely in daily language, some negative emotions that are stemming from expression could send messages to the subconscious. The individuality is under the influence of some signals belonging to the past. These signals constitute the collective subconscious. Shortly, this field which we may define as social memory is a field, too, where taboos, bans-prohibitions or the things that are not desired to be remembered are stored, as they are stored in individual memories. Social memory is transferred to the next generations through culture and is coded by language. These codes reveal themselves by tongue slips just as Freud’s famous definition describes. But when the society point is in question, this time the tongue slips reflect as idioms and proverbs in terms of language. Tongue slips concept is extremely cared about by Freud. According to Freud, tongue slips, more than being mistakes, are feelings’ rising to the surface from where they were hidden and depressed. Under the circumstances, the idioms that are translatives of culture and cultural structure could be define as the areas of the social subconscious that rise to the surface, as well. It will be observed that each of discourse and power based idioms and proverbs become power producing instruments, factors in a male-dominant society. Foucault, as it is seen in most of his studies, seeks the connection between knowledge and power through discourse and linguistic definitions that are concretized by discourse. The subject of this study is to reveal these power relations by going through idioms and proverbs as much as it is possible. As we mentioned above, idioms and proverbs can be interpreted as reflections of social subconscious. Idioms and proverbs are derived from the past experiences and maintained the pathfinding feature about life. However, it is believed that some of our idioms and proverbs do not comply with today’s circumstances and cause some problems against women in the result of historical changes and conversions in social, cultural, educational, economical… etc. areas that we have been through from past to present. It is very clear that the violence against women will not decrease unless this type of idioms and proverbs which display a structure that is far away from the equality and justice principles in man – woman relation is considered as the transfer of defected genetic inheritance coming from past to present. This position of man against woman is transferred from past to present through language and maintained its existence in cultural order. Because children be in cultural order going through language mediation under the influence of their families. The unconscious of children works through the ideology coming from the structure to which their families belong. Ideology is not a simple way of definition and discourse. Even though it is not taught the children, the forms of relations, attitudes, impositions that they witness run their unconscious by influencing it in the moments the children are left alone freely. Family present the subject to the society equipping it with specific ideological structures in which the subject exists. Within this context, when some of idioms and proverbs are analyzed, it will be revealed that the woman status in society is being revalorized from past to present and woman is otherized in proportion to man. Because, such definitions belong to the past and are judgements that are frozen in the unvarying history perspective of the world. The paternalistic structure of the Ottoman and even Seljukian times which was more feudal and earthbound in comparison with modern time causes p

Özet

Atasözleri ve deyimlerin bir toplumun sosyo-kültürel yapısı, tarihi ve yaşam biçimi hakkında bilgi sahibi olmamıza yardımcı olduğu bilinmektedir. Kişilerin değer yargılarının oluşumunda atasözleri ve deyimlerin büyük bir önemi olduğu düşünülmektedir. Çünkü kullanılan dil ve söylem biçiminin uzun zaman diliminde belli bir kültürün oluşmasına zemin hazırlaması ve aile aracılığıyla da gelecek kuşaklara aktarılması bilinen bir gerçekliktir. Bu çalışma kapsamında modernitenin insanı meta fetişizmi olarak gördüğü ve feministlerin eleştirdiği mal/meta konumuna indirgediği, bazı atasözleri ve deyimlerin ise kadını ötekileştirdiği görülmüştür. Bu amaçla Türk Dil Kurumunun resmi web sitesinde bulunan ve içinde kadın, kız, gelin, avrat, dilber... Vs. geçen atasözleri ve deyimlerin genel bir taraması yapılmıştır. Bu tarama sonucunda erkek egemen toplum anlayışı çerçevesinde kadına yönelik şu betimlemeler göze çarpmıştır; Kız ve erkek evlatları arasında kadına yönelik negatif ayrım, fiziksel ve aidiyet özellikleri bakımından ötekileştirme, erkeğe nispetle eksiklik, eş seçiminde fikrinin alınmaması, çifte standart, önyargı ile ilgili durum, hayvanlarla birlikte anılmalar, ahlaksal kavramlarla ifade edilmeleri, doğacak bebeğin erkek olarak istenilmesi... Vb. Bu makaleninamacı, hemen her gün medyada gördüğümüz, okuduğumuz Türkiye'de kadına yönelik şiddet haberlerinin perde arkasında, dilden dile aktarılarak bugüne gelen atasözleri ve deyimlerin var olup olmadığını araştırmak ve kamuoyunun dikkatini buna çekmektir. Kuşaktan kuşağa aktırılarak günümüze ulaşan bu tarz atasözleri ve deyimlerin kadına yönelik şiddette etkili olduğu düşünülmektedir