Abstract
Adopting a comparative and descriptive case study of The New York Times, this paper aims to probe into the gender discrimination against female politicians in the news media. The New York Times, one of the most authoritative newspapers in the world, can be a convincing representative to expose the universal ideologies like sexism in the news media. The authors attempt to analyze the sexism in news from two dimensions, namely, horizontal dimension (synchronic) and vertical dimension (diachronic). Horizontally, the news reports concerning Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, two rivals of the Democratic Party in the 2008 American presidential election, are chosen. By analyzing the difference in speech reporting, it can be seen that female politicians’ speeches are more controlled and interfered. Vertically, based on Markedness Theory, we explore the development and change in formal marking, distributional marking and semantic marking. It is observable that in spite of the current subtle sexism hidden in news reports, news media have made great efforts in preventing gender discrimination over the past century and sexism against women in the current news reports appears to be less direct and more subtle compared with the past.
Highlights
This paper adopts a comparative and descriptive study of the news reports concerning female and male politicians in The New York Times to probe into sexism in news language
From a two dimensional study: vertical study of the markedness phenomenon during the period 1914-2014, and horizontal study of the modes of speech reporting employed on Obama and Hillary in the 2008 US Presidential Election, several preliminary findings have come to light
The synchronic study suggests that the modes of speech reporting which are manipulated by reporters may give male politicians more discourse power
Summary
Sexism in News: A Comparative Study on the Portray of Female and Male Politicians in The New York Times. Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 4, 709-719. Studying sexism from the perspective of news media provides us with a clearer and more direct way to detect the asymmetrical power distribution between females and males. The authors hope to arouse people’s awareness of the hidden sexism which may put women in a disadvantaged position and proposes some current trends of sexism in news media which are well on their way to gender equality. To explore the development and evolvement of sexist language in news through the past century and detects positive changes in gender equality
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