The Rise and Fall of Liz Truss in English-Language Media Coverage

Abstract

Using the example of the life and work of former British Prime Minister Liz Truss, this article examines the problem of perception and evaluation of the personality of a female politician by media representatives. The aim of the study is to examine the sociolinguistic markers used in the English-language media in 2022, which characterise Liz Truss. The objectives of the research are to search for information about her biography and career growth, as well as to analyse articles published on the websites of leading English-language media in order to select sociolinguistic markers that assess the personality and the work of the ex-prime minister. As a result of the study, the hypothesis was confirmed that the media had a positive attitude towards Liz Truss’s coming to power, which was quickly replaced by a negative attitude due to her failure to bring about social and economic transformation in the UK. The result of the work was a corpus of sociolinguistic markers that characterise the personality and activities of Truss, which allow us to argue that the negative attitude towards the prime minister was not based on gender, but on a failure to fulfil the expectations that society had of her.