Construction of Gender Identity in Political Discourse

Abstract

The article regards the phenomenon of political communication from the perspective of the particularities of constructing gender identity by politicians. As far as the influence of the gender factor on politicians' speech is concerned, the most relevant approach among many others is the discourse approach formed within the paradigm of cognitive linguistics, which considers political discourse as the object of study. The paper deals with the notion of political discourse and examines a hypothesis that gender factor might have a number of manifestations in political communication. It is noted that studying the specificity of constructing gender identity by politicians in discursive practices is becoming a highly topical issue as the importance of female participation in public and political life is growing. Political decision-making has long been considered the prerogativeofmen, but now the necessity of studying the female factor in this sphere is obvious. The author dwells upon the historical background of linguistic gender studies and summarizes the main stages of their development focusing mainly on the theory of the social construction of gender. The founders of this theory advance the thesis that an individual's gender identity is shaped in the process of constructing gender relations in communicative interaction. Further in the article we analyse a few devices of creating the images of masculinity and femininity by famous English and American politicians. As structural components of gender identity, masculinity and femininity turn out to be modifiable parameters depending on the pragmatic attitudes of communicators. Traditional androcentrism of political discourse may account for modifying the female speech style towards masculinity to achieve certain communicative aims.