| Abstract [eng] |
"Social Gender as a New "Landscape" for Lithuanian Scouts to Wonder" is the title of this Master's thesis. Its goal is to examine some of the most important documents from a lithuanian scout organization - "Lietuvos skautija". The major aim is to determine whether social gender has a place in this organization, and if so, how much? This organization was chosen since it is a member of the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM) and is now Lithuania's largest scout organization. The data that is being analysed in the paper is: (I) Parts of the organization’s statutes (2018): Scout movement (2); Lithuanian Scouting (3); Mission and Goal (4); Principles (5); Age Breakdown (8.11). (II) LS regulations regarding uniforms (2017). (III) LS Youth Program – guidelines for the leader (2019): In this specific document the attention is paid to the principle of classification of youth programs, their descriptions, and main goals. (IV) Few pages from the Book of Scouting (what is mostly considered as an origin for the scout movement) – “Scouting for Boys” (1908), written by Lord Robert Baden Powell, pages from 44 to 46. The approach of critical discourse analysis is being used to attain the goal of this paper. More precisely, Norman Fairclough, a linguistics professor, devised a text-oriented discourse analysis, which is being used for the analysis. N. Fairclough provides a very useful technique for analyzing textual content - ten questions with additional subquestions. This strategy allows you to focus on individual linguistic alternatives, as well as their juxtaposition, sequencing, and arrangement. The concept of “landscape”, which was introduced by Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen, is being used in this paper. More specifically speaking, the “landscape” is equated to the concept of social gender. This study uses three basic theoretical foundations as a starting point: (I) Habitus - a notion established by Pierre Bourdieu; (II) Social gender, which is based on a non-binary concept and perception of gender. Result of the analysis shows that: 1. Linguistics can play a very important role in the ways we understand and do “scouting”, because even though all scouts, around the globe, have the same textual origin – a book, when it is being translated, some of the information is being added and some of it gets lost. Cultural connotations are very important. 2. The organization that is being analysed in this paper, Lietuvos skautija, has its own specific habitus, which leads to developing and owning a linguistic habitus as well. This can be seen by the usage of specific words and terms. 3. The essential instrument for the development, reproduction, and maintenance of scout discourse is vocabulary. Vocabulary plays the key role because of its power to establish probabilities and ranges of options. 4. Scout discourse is still highly impacted by the stereotypical view of genders, which dates back to late 19th century; this could be understood as the answer to the main question raised in this paper – there’s no, to little, space for non-binary social gender in this scout organization. This is exactly the reason, why social gender would be a new “landscape” for Lithuanian scout to wonder. To summarize, social gender might be a new "landscape" for Lithuanian scouts, but successful implementation of organizational reforms would need a lot of effort and attention. This analysis also demonstrates that the problem of scouting and gender in Lithuania is important, but that the academic field is relatively unexplored, and that more emphasis might be dedicated to it. All in all, this paper shall be treated and understood as an expression of concern for the scouts of Lithuania. The aim of this paper was to outline some of the possible major issues related to scout values and changing social environment – the collision of the two. |
