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Sociolinguistics Symposium 19: Language and the City

Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

Freie Universität Berlin | August 21-24, 2012

Programme: accepted abstracts

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Abstract ID: 1082

Part of Session 196: Discourse, Politics and Women as Global Leaders (Other abstracts in this session)

Gender and leadership in Lithuanian political discourse: reflection of values through pronominal choices

Authors: Bijeikiene, Vilma
Submitted by: Bijeikiene, Vilma (Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania)

In light of the changing gender representation in politics and most importantly in political leadership, Lithuania should be granted a special position among examples of women political leaders’ success stories. Although the general proportion of female MPs in the Lithuanian Parliament Seimas is not at all impressive with 26 (18%) female and 115 (82%) male MPs, the highest political offices are held by female politicians: namely the President of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskaitė, the Speaker of Seimas Irena Degutienė, the Minister of Finance Ingrida Šimonytė and the Minister of National Defence Rasa Juknevičienė. The situation can be interpreted as a breaking point with regard to widely-quoted stereotypic assumptions as, for instance, professions related to politics, economics and military issues are typical male professions (Walsh 2001) or some statistical evidence like the one provided by Wodak (2003) that women rarely occupy the top authoritative positions. Moreover, with around three years in office the two female political leaders have been enjoying a steady support by the public in approval ratings. This factor demonstrates not only a dramatic shift from traditional gender divisions of women being ‘silenced’ (Cameron 1998), but also a rather significant move from female discourse of resistance and survival (Martin-Rojo 1997) to the discourse of success.
Lakoff (2004) claims that for political discourse to make a positive influence on electorate it needs to be built on values. With these observations in mind, the present paper aims to investigate how such values as responsibility, fairness, accountability, active agency, etc. are delivered through choices of pronouns (cf. Wilson 1990) and the corresponding conjugation of verbs by the main political leaders in Lithuania: two female politicians (the President and the Speaker of Seimas) and two male politicians (the Prime Minister and the Leader of Opposition). The main hypothesis is as follows: given that the two female political leaders can generate more support from the general public than the two male political leaders, such values as responsibility, fairness and active agency are expressed in the discourse of the former more than in the discourse of the latter. Data for analysis come from transcripts of parliamentary debates and political interviews available in the media. The study is based on mainly qualitative discourse analysis with quantification for comparison.

Cameron D. 1998. Cameron, Deborah ed. 1998a. The Feminist Critique of Language: A Reader.  2nd ed.
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Lakoff, G. 2004.  Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your values and Frame the Debate. Vermont: Chelsea Green.
Martín-Rojo, L.  1997. “The politics of gender: agency and self-reference in women’s discourse”.
Political Linguistics, 231-254. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Walsh, C.  2001.  Gender and Discourse: Language and Power in Politics, the Church and Organisations.  Harlow:
Pearson Education.
Wodak, R. 2003. Multiple Identities: The Roles of Female Parliamentarians in the EU Parliament. The Handbook of
Language and Gender, 671-698. Malden: Blackwell.
Wilson, J.  1990.  Politically Speaking: The Pragmatic Analysis of Political Language. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

 

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