Gender differences in subjective representations about artificial bilingualism

Many studies have been devoted to bilingualism but issue of subjective representations about bilingualism has been little explored. The present study examined the results of the psychosemantic research of men’s and women’s subjective representations about people associated with the foreign language (FL) learning process, in other words, artificial bilingual (AB) development. The original method of Specific semantic differential was used to study and reconstruct the system of meanings that underlie the interpersonal perception of people included in the FL learning process. Results showed that the semantic spaces of subjective representations about people associated with the FL learning process, have the same dimension, but differ in content: semantic space for males is based on factors “authority – ordinariness”, “unpleasant – agreeable” and “courage – caution”; for females – “enthusiasm – apathy”, “unpleasant – agreeable” and “modesty – arrogance”. The novelty of the study lies in the use of the pool data method as a method for comparing factors of the structures of two samples, which allows us to identify gender differences in interpersonal perception: males perceive people included in the FL learning process as more active, responsible, mobile and hardworking, females - as more level-headed, indifferent and distant.