engleski

Language and Gender in the 113th Congressional Speeches

Men and women are, by the definition, indeed different in various aspects. Yet, irregardless of the differences, the thing both categories have in common is the fact that they are human beings using language as the most important communication tool. However, gender differences are mirrored in language being extensively explored by sociolinguists since 1960s. The research studies are numerous ; ranging from biological and cultural to power and social constructivist approaches. This paper aims at studying gender differences in language use in a setting of political speeches. The 113th United States Congress is the current meeting of the legislative branch composed of 541 individuals with 102 female representatives, being the highest record so far, which is the reason for the choice. For the purpose of this research, one speech for each female and randomly chosen 102 male representatives were chosen, which gives a total of 204 speeches. The official transcripts were searched for at The Library of Congress Thomas and downloaded from the website http://thomas.loc.gov/home/thomas.php. However, Extension of Remarks and Daily Digest were excluded from the data set together with the tributes and one-minute speeches. The transcripts were analyzed using the tool LIWC (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count) which analyzes 70 language dimensions. The research has shown that women use more personal pronouns and verbs, while men use nouns, articles and numbers. When using personal pronouns, men tend to use the pronoun I, whereas women use the pronoun we. Furthermore, men use imperative structures while women use suggestions. Additionally, speeches delivered by women are full of euphemisms and hypercorrectness in comparison to speeches delivered by men who occasionally use swear words, non-standard varieties of language and short verb forms. Also, men tend to use quotes and personal examples while women rarely use quotes and if using personal examples, they are in the function of exemplifying the issue rather than bragging. Equally important, considering the nature of the political discourse, there is a very low level of overall emotion words ; however, female legislators tend to use them more than male. Although being the masculine style feature, the research has shown that women use long words more than men.

113. zasjedanje američkoga Kongresa; spol; jezik; razlike

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