Abstract
Anchored on the public stereotype towards the dichotomization of gender and the social gender construct theory, the study examines the gender differences in terms of lexical choice manifested by the selected 20 U.S. presidential candidates from the year 2012 to 2020 and presents the changes of each gender group in a male-dominated political context. The corpus of this study consists of 60257 lexis of 10 male politicians and 63095 words of 10 female politicians which are extracted from their announcement and campaign speeches. Findings obtained from the results based on the quantitative research design and the application of CLAWS, AntConc and chi-square test reveal statistically significant gender-based differences. The findings support that even though male and female presidential candidates have almost the same priorities of usage in general lexical categories, the lexical choice of male candidates was relatively close to feminization while women tended to be neutral. Finally, it further speculates that the candidates of differing gender enjoy a distinctive consciousness on the social gender construction in public discourse to challenge or neutralize public stereotypes of gender identity. In view of the findings, the study recommends a questionnaire survey to verify the inference on gender color displayed by different language variables and an extensive database to enable a greater validity of the results in the future.
Highlights
Language is one of the important mechanisms for human beings to express their thoughts
It might be criticized that the discussion of gender difference in the use of language is premised on public's gender discrimination and the simple conceptualization of dichotomy
Based on the dichotomization of gender and from the perspective of social gender construction theory, the current dissertation provides a clear map of language differences between male and female candidates, and is conducive to present the changes of each gender group in a male -dominated political context
Summary
Language is one of the important mechanisms for human beings to express their thoughts. As a result of the inequality in power between men and women, the subsequent difference theory which emphasized different subcultures and different socialization processes experienced by men and women when they grew up gave birth to the modern gender theory or the social construction gender theory that pointed out the dynamic constructed relationship between social gender identity, and discourse practice. These diverse linguistic gender theories provided a good theoretical foundation for contemporary linguistic gender studies
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