Women and linguistics: historiographical perspectives

The article is devoted to the presentation of the history of scientific activity of women linguists. The relevance of the topic is due to the markedly increased interest in scientific work and achievements of women in the history of various sciences, including linguistics, as evidenced by a number of works that have appeared in the last 20 years, both in domestic and foreign scientific works. To date, researchers of this topic face several problems, including a fragmentary representation of the history of women in linguistics, the lack of an explicit description of their activities in a historical context, which makes it difficult to understand the history of linguistics from the point of view of its immanent laws of development, as well as its conditionality by the socio-historical context. It seems that in order to solve these problems, it is necessary to use other methods of describing linguistic historiography. The article emphasizes the advantage of using the narrative method for historiography of linguistics, which allows presenting the data necessary to form an opinion about the scientific heritage and contribution of women linguists. A fairly effective method is the use of M. Foucault's theory of discursive practices, the use of which helps to explain the motives of behavior and the choice of research directions of women linguists. These considerations are accompanied by several examples that clearly show the differences between the traditional linguistic historiographic representation and the description in the spirit of narrative historiography of linguistics. An important aspect of the latter is the presentation of factors that are not taken into account or are rarely taken into account in the traditional description of the history of linguistics. We are talking about the lithophonic aspect, i.e. the mention of co-authors of scientific success. The article provides examples of modern scientific projects on the history of women linguists implemented recently, which once again emphasizes the relevance of the topic. In conclusion, the author outlines a number of perspectives for studying and describing this aspect in the general practice in historiography of linguistics.