Anna Denysiuk
Kamianets-Podilskyi National Ivan Ohiienko University
Scientific supervisor: PhD, Barbaniuk O.O.
PECULIARITIES OF GENDER MARKERS OF FEMINITY
IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE
This article highlights the hotly debated topic about investigating femininity markers in newspaper articles in general, some feminine features that prevail in the media representation of ex-Prime Minister of the UK – Theresa May, in particular.
Key words: gender, linguistics, femininity, discourse, politics, feature.
The second half of the twentieth century saw Europe gripped by socio-cultural changes, namely the first wave of feminism. It was traditional to believe that women could not participate in social life because of their nature, their brains could not function like men’s. That judgment was not scientifically motivated but was a part of a whole epoch. As a result, the appearance of women in those areas of life where they did not use previously involved (politics, in particular) has attracted the attention of many scientists.
Due to rapid development of intercultural relations in the modern world, the political sphere is becoming the subject of study for different sciences, sociolinguistics and gender linguistics included.
The study and analysis of gender have received much attention from foreign linguists, like R. Lakoff (“Gender and Woman’s Place”), D. Cameron (“Evolution, language and the battle of the sexes”), F. Smith, O. Jespersen, D. Spender, D. Tannen, J. Holmes, P. Eckert, who studied the peculiarities of feminine gender in linguistics. In the late 80’s – early 90’s of the last century gender studies were actively developing in Russian linguistics (N. Arutiunova, A. Zalevska, L. Synelnikova, Y. Apresian, A. Kirilina, I. Olshanskyi) and subsequently in national linguistics (V. Slinchuk, O. Bondarenko, L. Stavytska, S. Semeniuk, O. Taranenko).
Gender studies intensified in the 70s of the XX century in European and American sociolinguists [4, p. 248]. They were convinced, men and women detect and demonstrate different styles of behavior during different political events, which affects the representation of both males and females in language. Linguistic gender studies correlated language with personality based on sex [4, p. 249].
Admittedly, gender (or socio-cultural gender) is the social gender of a person as opposed to biological sex: socio-role status, which determines the social opportunities of each sex in education, professional career, access to authority, family role, and reproductive behavior. It is one of the basic dimensions of the social structure of society. As a matter of fact, the use of the word «gender» as a general synonym for the word «sex», is incorrect: gender is a social role due to a person’s gender.
By some means, the cultural symbolism of gender (which gives images of femininity and masculinity in their socio-cultural set of certain specific phenomena and facts) demonstrates a “cultural-symbolic hierarchy through cognitive constructs” [1, p. 137].
- Lakoff in her work “The Deficit Approach” describes male language as stronger, more prestigious, and more desirable. She argues that women are socialized into behaving like «ladies» (linguistically and in other ways too) and this, in turn, keeps them in their place because «ladylike» precludes being «powerful» in our culture. Likewise, J. Coates reflects on women as a social group. He claims that to study different ways in which men and women use language, there must be considerations about how the group of men differs from the group of women [2, 35].
One of the gender scientists, D. Tannen, induced an essential postulate for linguistics: two genders exploit language and speech for two different reasons. Men use language to keep influence, status, and make arrangements. Women, by contrast, use language to establish communication, to maintain the relationship, and “to be liked” [6].
Hence, we cannot divide language into two groups (the language of women and one of the men), but we speak about the intensity of femininity and masculinity in the language. There is no person, who uses canonical language without admixture from other discourses or other socially induced groups. If we speak about the degree of femininity/masculinity in political connotation through the media network, we will notice the degree of femininity/masculinity is demonstrated as a stereotype about men and women in its pure form.
Such typical women’s roles as wife, teacher, nurse, shop assistant prove to be true by public opinion, as well as such political posts as Minister of Health; Minister of Social Services, of Citizenship and Immigration, Minister of Public Relations, Minister of Maternity and Child Welfare Service and Minister of Education are associated with women [5].
Speaking about political sphere, researchers usually study the relationship between speech and politics, using the peculiarities of the verbal behavior of any political figure [3, p. 214]. In this aspect, men and women behave differently.
To analyze the up-to-date feminine markers, we take the Guardian newspaper as the source of information. We tried to define feminine features that prevail in the media representation of ex-Prime Minister of the UK – Theresa May – a woman, who has always been in the focus of media and world community, a second female PM in the political history of Great Britain. Here are some examples:
Theresa May too eager to pay homage to Donald Trump, says John Bercow [7]. In this sentence, we observe the petulance of Theresa May’s intentions. That describes her as a person who cannot wait and want to get what she desires very much. Even the adverb too emphasizes her wish.
Bercow said her relationship with Trump fell apart after she criticized the president for retweeting material from far-right political group Britain First [7].
In this example, we notice how Theresa May is critical in the relation to the man, expressing her complaint and disapproval.
Two days later a clearly enraged May made a televised statement demanding the EU “show us some respect“, saying the UK could not accept a simple brushing aside by Donald Tusk [8]. In this case, we may notice Teresa’s irritation about a certain situation and that she shows it directly to the audience and claiming “respect” to her country and her as well.
Thus, journalists used adjectives to emphasize the behavior or intentions of Theresa May and even her subjective opinion that refers to the feminine markers. Furthermore, it is only the beginning of our research and we do not exclude that even some masculine markers will be used to represent in her image.
References
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- https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jan/09/theresa-may-too-eager-to-pay-homage-to-donald-trump-says-john-bercow [16.01.2021]
- https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/06/an-inside-view-of-whats-going-on-behind-closed-doors-in-brexit-talks [16.01.202 1]