From Academic Term to Everyday Slur: The Definitions of “Gender” in Two Volumes of the “Dictionary of New Words in the Bulgarian Language”

The paper considers a number of key aspects surrounding the appropriation of the word gender into the Bulgarian language. “Gender theory”, “gender ideology”, “genderism”, “genderization”, “genderette” are only a few of the doublets which have become part of Bulgaria’s political as well as everyday discourses. Our main goal is to analyze the recent developments by which these predominantly pejorative meanings and usages of the word have gained legitimacy, in part, with the aid of the official Bulgarian institutions. To do this, we focus on the definitions of “gender”, which are offered in the recently published “Dictionary of new words in the Bulgarian language (from the first two decades of the 21st century)” under the authority of the Institute for Bulgarian Language at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. To set the context, we begin with an overview of the so-called anti-gender mobilizations. This is followed with an outline of the reception of the concept of “gender” in Bulgaria. Here we focus on two key fields. First, we look at the word’s history within the Bulgarian academic space after the fall of the Iron Curtain, and second – the current political appropriations which fill the term with derogatory meanings. From there we continue with a critical examination of the explanatory-descriptive segments and the accompanying illustrative materials of the dictionary articles related to the word and its derivatives. Our main goal is to follow the shifts of meanings which the concept goes through. To further exemplify this, we draw a comparison with the previous version of the dictionary, which relies on a completely different explanatory strategy.