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Article published In: AILA Review
Vol. 36:2 (2023) ► pp.163–193

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Discourse analysis of male and female representatives of selected countries at the United Nations general debates

ORCiD logo with link | Al-Baha University
Published online: 15 February 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/aila.23001.als
Abstract
The aim of this paper was to evaluate gender differences in the language used in United Nations (UN) General Assembly debates by one male and one female representative each from India, China, the USA, and Indonesia. The critical discourse analysis (CDA) framework of (2015). Critical discourse analysis. In D. Tannen, H. E. Hamilton, & D. Schiffrin (Eds.), The handbook of discourse analysis (2nd ed., Vol. I1, pp. 466–485). Wiley Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar was used along with the 25 discursive devices in this framework. The data on frequencies of variables were analysed statistically. No significant differences were observed between positive comments about oneself, negative comments about others, length of speech (in words), and the various devices by the gender of the speaker at the 0.05 level of significance. However, gender differences in terms of higher levels for males than for females were observed for populism (t(6) = 2.354, p = .057), norm expression (t(6) = 2.171, p = 0.073), and positive comments about oneself (t(6) = 2.224, p = .068). The correlation coefficients were significant between genders for positive-self, norm expression, and national self-glorification only. These results could be attributed to the small size of four male and four female speeches, leading to high values of standard error, which reflects the significance of differences. Also, there could be overlapping and mixing of gender characteristics in connection with different contexts and occasions due to emergent identities. These political identities were created in particular situations or contexts, and it was not clear how much they could be a result of female or male politicians’ styles. This explanation by Sivrić, M., & Jurčić, D. (2014). Gender differences in political discourse. In A. Akbarov (Ed.), Linguistics, culture and identity in foreign language education (pp. 1231–1240). International Burch University. Retrieved 24 November 2022 from [URL] seems to be valid for this research as well. Small samples could be a limitation of this study. However, many other works used even smaller samples. The generalisability of these findings needs to be tested using other similar studies.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Aim of the study
  • The research hypothesis
  • Literature review
    • Discourse analysis
    • Review of literature on the use of CDA for studies on gender differences in political speeches
  • Methodology
    • Corpus of information
    • Analytical method
  • Results
  • Statistical analysis
  • Addressing the research hypothesis
  • Discussion
  • Conclusions
  • Limitations
  • References
References (30)
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