Gender-marked Metaphors: Influence of Grammatical Gender and Animateness on Referential Choice of Metaphorical Name of the Person in the Russian Language

We explored the influence of linguistic factors on referential relatedness of metaphorical name of the person in the Russian language. The experiment demonstrated that grammatical gender is an important factor in making a metaphorical reference: it was much more acceptable for a hypothetical female referent to be named with a noun that carried feminine gender than masculine. Influence of animateness depended on the sex of a hypothetical referent: females agreed to be “animate” beings rather than “inanimate” objects independently of grammatical gender.