dc.description.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. |
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