GENDER DIFFERENCES IN VERBAL AND NONVERBAL AGGRESSION

Abstract

Gender differences permeate every aspect of human personality and appearance, and dictate how men and women should act, think and behave. Gender embodies a pattern of relations that evolves over time to define male and female, masculinity and femininity, concurrently structuring and regulating people’s relation to society. Gender decides what is expected, permitted and valued in a woman or a man in a given context. This paper discusses male and female aggression in political debates with a special focus on the recent debate held on 9th September 2021 in Canada. The analyses carried out through the methods of content, discourse and pragmalinguistic analyses, show that aggression is frequently categorized as a social behavior, and thus falls within a set of criteria depending on the roles that people occupy. In the world today, there is an increase in the use of communicative aggression, both verbal and non-verbal in the political arena. Aggression is widely applied in political communication where the main purpose is to fight the opponent and get the attention of the audience and voters. Male politicians are expected to be verbally and non-verbally more aggressive than women while female politicians perceived as less aggressive and considered to be better performers. However, this assumption remains an area of contention.