Features of the American gender argumentative political discourse

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Features of the American gender argumentative political discourse

Tetiana Sawchouk

PhD in Germanic Studies,

Associate professor at the Department of Philology and Translation Ivano-Frankivsk National Technical University of Oil and Gas, Ukraine

Summary

Key words: gender study, equality, speech, issue, economic crisis, terrorism, argument, common features, statistics.

Recently gender issues have been within the scope of close attention of linguists. The concept of "gender" reflects the idea of a system of roles, relations and stereotypes of behavior between men and women that have been developed in a certain society [1]. As a socio-cultural category, gender is regularly reproduced in the structures of a person's linguistic consciousness during real discursive interaction, which is determined by 1) the meta-context of the world picture of a certain linguistic ethno-culture, 2) the macro-context of socio-cultural norms and 3) directly the microcontext of a specific interpersonal interaction. The gender identity of the speakers is an integral component of the linguistic personality, a complex of biological and sociocultural characteristics and is actualized in speech in each individual communication situation [2].

There are different approaches to gender studies: at the level of morphology - morpheme markers (-ess, -trix, -ette, -euse, -ine, etc.) to generic nominations;

grammar - the peculiarities of sentence and grammatical constructions used by men and women; semantics - lexemes with different degrees of emotional load, axiological markers that directly qualify men and women, etc. [3]. In this paper we were trying to look at gender issue from the point of view of topics of the speeches, usage of various argumentation tactics, and emotionality of the statements.

It is generally believed that the trigger for the attention to the gender problems was the development of feminism, which originated in the United States almost two centuries ago, and the struggle for equality between men and women throughout the world. american argumenatative discourse

In American society the struggle for equality between men and women has lately gained significant development, especially regarding social equality: the unresolved issue of wages, when American women are paid less for the same type and amount of work than men, the gender discrimination on the country's political arena, when far fewer women than men have achieved success, etc.

Keeping that in mind, the conventional speeches of political campaigns of 2008 and 2016 were chosen for this study in order to examine the gender features of argumentation in both men and women's speeches, as they were applying for the same position (either a president or vice president). Speeches of the represenatives of three parties were chosen for analysis: The Democratic Party - Hillary R. Clinton [4; 5], Barack Obama [6], Joe Biden [7] and Timothy Michael Kaine [8], The Republican Party - John McCain [9], Sarah Palin [10], Donald Trump [11], Michael Richard Pence

[12] , The Green Party - Cynthia McKinney [13], Jill Ellen Stein [14]. The choice of the first two parties is obvious as they are the most influential ones in the USA and it is logiocally to assume that politicians from those parties can skillfully use different linguistic means to convience voters and gain their support, such as argumentation, manipulation, etc. The Green Party does not have such an influence on the country's political arena, however, during both election compains women were elected as candidates for the highest post from the party, which means that they had a significant influence on its members and supporters.

Regadring the topics of political speeches, both men and women touch on similar questions, the leading of which was the state of economy in the US (economic crisis and those problems associated with it: unemployment, price increases, impoverishment of the population, etc.): workers who've lost a job (McCain, J.); no relief for 100 million American families (Biden, J.); our economy is in turmoil (Obama, B.); predatory lending, mortgage crisis, foreclosures, $53 trillion in debt (McKinney, C.); Jobs lost, houses gone, falling wages, rising prices (Clinton, H.); abuses of earmark spending (Palin, S.), lost good jobs (Stein, J.), rack up $30 trillion in debt (Kaine, T.), strip our country ofjobs, NAFTA, one of the worst economic deals ever made (Trump, D.), written off by bad economic policies (Pence, M.)

Issues of social security, health care, and education were also among those that both men and women raised in their speeches: failed school bureaucracies, remove barriers to qualified instructors (McCain, J.); 150,000 more children and parents have health care in Illinois (Biden, J.); provide every child a decent education (Obama, B.); health care would be provided for everyone here, medicare-for-all type health care system (McKinney, C.); deep and meaningful equality, ending discrimination to promoting unionization (Clinton, H., 2008), predatory student debt (Stein, J.), the minimum wage should be a living wage, access to education for all students with disabilities (Clinton, H., 2016), rescue kids from failing schools, repeal and replace disastrous Obamacare (Trump, D.), fighting to get health insurance for 8 million kids (Kaine, T.),

All speeches of 2008 had a common feature, namely the question of the war with Iraq and Afghanistan. However, politicians had different opinions regarding the issue: while J. McCain and S. Palin did not plan to withdraw troops from these countries (Victory in Iraq is finally in sight (Palin, S.)), J. Biden, B. Obama, H. Clinton and C. McKinney declared their intentions to bring the troops home as soon as possible: America cannot afford four more years of this (Biden, J.), end the war in Iraq, bring our troops home (Clinton, H). Speeches of 2016 were more focused on the influence of such foreign policy on the state of the country and the terrorist threat: Americans were savagely murdered by an Islamic terrorist (Trump, D.), This policy will have cost us $6 trillion dollars, the Wars for Oil with a new kind of offensive in the Middle East (Stein, J.). The latter, as well as S. Palin, actively highlighted the problem of the country's energy supply, as well as the problem of fighting terrorism: we began a nearly forty-billion- dollar natural gas pipeline, Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America. (Palin, S.), 100% renewable energy by 2030, an immediate moratorium on all new fossil fuel infrastructure and exploration; fight terrorism with one hand, while... train terrorists and arm terrorists with the other (Stein, J.).

C. McKinney speech was a bit different from all the other speeches, as she raised the issue of environmental degradation: more heat waves, intense rains, increased drought, and stronger hurricanes (McKinney, C.). She also was the one who preferred to make an emphasis on the issue of equality between men and women was sharply expressed in the speech of the latter. The word woman along with all derived word forms and word combinations was used 29 times in her speech: woman's rights, a black woman, homeless men and women, for every woman and child in America, women o f our military, etc. The same problem was raised by H. Clinton in her speech of 2008 (the word woman along with all derived word forms and word combinations was used 14 times): women don't earn equal pay for equal work, the 19th amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote, etc. B. Obama also spoke in defense of women's rights: equal pay for an equal day's work.

The concept of "importance/significance" in the speeches of some politicians was very often expressed through the word value. C. McKinney used this word most often - 25 times in the entire speech. She used the word value mainly next to the name of her party (Green Party's values) or with the possessive pronoun your, emphasizing the fact that her values and the values of her party coincided with the values of the voters: Had the Green Party's values been reflected in publicpolicy,that the values o f the Green Party, our values get overridden and our representatives give us something else. Other politicians did not use this word at all or quite rarely, but operated with value concepts such as: freedom and equality, justice and opportunity (Clinton, H., 2016), children with special needs inspire a special love (Palin, S.), ...remains safe from its enemies (McCain, J.), for the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet (Obama, B.), protect this nation (Pence, M), an incredible cultural diversity (Kaine, T.). The above mentioned examples show that the speakers tried not to miss any aspect of the life of their nation, from the family to patriotism, feminism and public safety.

In their speeches, women expressed their arguments more emotionally, using emotionally colored:

• epithets (stolen elections, harsh reality, a sick government, windfall profits, right reasons, a vital pipeline, selfless passion),

• intensifiers (saves so much money, know too well, for too long, Taxes are too high);

• comparative and superlative adjectives (racial disparities are worse than; making our nation better and stronger, one of the poorest communities);

• adverbs (gas prices went up dramatically; be fully contributing members of society, become fundamentally a marketing strategy);

• metaphors, idioms and phraseological units (something is out of kilter, they wrote him off, covered head to toe and cradle to grave).

Men's speeches were more restrained and did not contain as many emotionally colored units. For comparison: the total volume of women's speeches is about 18,000 words, and the total number of emotionally colored units (epithets, metaphors, phraseological units, etc.) is about 500; the total volume of men's speeches is about 22,000 words, and the total number of emotionally colored units is about 420.

Candidates were aware of the fact that it was necessary to speak in a language understandable to voters. That is why the speeches contained colloquial words, parasitic words, even idioms, which made the speeches more emotional and closer to the audience. More of these elements were found in men's speeches: a plan that would gamble (risk) your retirement (Obama, B.); I wish that my dad (father)...; give me a break... (Biden, J.); We have to catch up to history... (McCain, J.), but they were also present in women's addresses: we know something is out of kilter (something is wrong) (McKinney, C.), stand up (fight back) to bullies (Clinton, H.).

Men often used statistics in their speeches: our trade deficit is $800 hundred billion dollars, national debt to more than $19 trillion, household incomes are down more than $4,000 (Trump, D.), nearly 150,000 new jobs, a $2 billion surplus (Pence, M.), measure progress in the 23 million new jobs, the average American family saw its income go up $7,500 instead of go down $2,000, like it has under George Bush (Obama, B.). In this example, not only rational arguments were used (23 million new jobs, $7,500 and $2,000 income), but also contrast (go up - go down) and comparison (like it has under George Bush).

Men more often than women used as arguments facts that are supposedly common knowledge, and therefore did not cause doubts. This is the so-called tactic "yes..., but...": He's tough. He perseveres..., but he's never turned his back on the working men (Pence, M.), They paid their deposits, but the condos were never built (Kaine, T.). B. Obama resorted to this tactic most often: Yes, we must provide more ladders to success... But we must also admit that programs alone can't replace parents; We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing. B. Obama initially agreed with the general opinion (Yes, we must provide more ladders), but then made some corrections (But we must also admit that..., can't replace parents). The repetition of the modal words must and can't also contributed to the strengthening of the argumentation effect in this case. In the second example, B. Obama first made concessions (may not agree on), which helped remove the barrier between the speaker and the audience, and then went on the offensive, convincing the audience of the need for certain actions: but surely we can agree on...

So, the speeches of men and women had a lot in common, but there were also distinctive features. As it turned out, the topics of men's and women's speeches were very similar. The main topic for all politicians was the topic of the economic crisis. However, women paid more attention to the consequences of this crisis (deterioration of social security, reduction of health care, deterioration of the quality of children's education, etc.), while men talked more about the causes (increase in taxes, increase in prices for goods and services). It was also found that in men's speeches of 2008 a lot of attention was paid to the issue of the war with Iraq and Afghanistan, while women raised the issue of social equality between men and women (especially the speech of C. McKinney) and terrorism in speeches of 2016. They also more often resorted to emotional pressure and contrast tactics.

References

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