A critical discourse analysis of president Johnson Sirleaf‟S speeches as manifestation of power, gender and ideology

Abstract

Politics has been for a long time male dominated. However, over the last decades, it has become evident that the numbers of female representatives in the political sphere have shown a significant increase. Unfortunately research work on the discourses of women who occupy such positions that require a great deal of power management and social presence is just a handful. This may be due to the fact that their presence is fairly recent. There is therefore the need for research to be conducted on these women‟s speeches to evaluate how they live their lives through language. It is for this reason that this work seeks to do a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of speeches of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.. The study adopts Fairclough‟s (1995a) Critical Discourse Analysis theoretical framework which asserts that there is a link across text, discourse practice and sociocultural practice. The work explores the linguistic elements in her political speeches. It aims to show how she uses language to construct her identity as an empowered woman. It also aims to reveal the ideologies present in her speeches. Specifically, it evaluates how linguistic tools were manipulated to reveal her ideological stance and to express her position of power. Different linguistic tools for the analysis of the speeches will be applied. These include stylistic devices, as well as semantic representations appearing in the political speeches. The study adopts the descriptive qualitative research method. The study reveals that President Sirleaf does not surrender totally to society‟s linguistic expectations of her as a woman. In some instances, her speeches confirm certain characteristics of female language. She uses the pronoun „we‟ mostly compared to her use of the pronoun „I‟ in presenting her achievements as a president. In other instances, she violates it in order to assert her independence, both as a woman and a politician with power in a male dominated society. The study also observes that President Johnson Sirleaf beliefs in feminism and liberalism as political ideologies. She uses several rhetorical devices such anaphora and repetition, allusion, simile, modality, naming, and agency todemonstrate these political ideologies and also to assert power.