Warlords Or Midwives? Representations of Theresa May, Nicola Sturgeon and Arlene Foster in British Quality News Discourse and Their Positioning As Political Leaders
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Saara Oinonen Warlords or Midwives? Representations of Theresa May, Nicola Sturgeon and Arlene Foster in British quality news discourse and their positioning as political leaders Saara Oinonen Pro gradu-avhandling i engelska språket och litteraturen Handledare: Martin Gill Fakulteten för humaniora, psykologi och teologi Åbo Akademi 2020 Saara Oinonen ÅBO AKADEMI – FAKULTETEN FÖR HUMANIORA, PSYKOLOGI OCH TEOLOGI Abstrakt för avhandling pro gradu Ämne: Engelska språket och litteraturen Författare: Saara Oinonen Arbetets titel: Warlords or Midwives? Representations of Theresa May, Nicola Sturgeon and Arlene Foster in British quality news discourse and their positioning as political leaders Handledare: Martin Gill Handledare: Abstrakt: This study looks at how British quality online newspapers represented three female political leaders Theresa May, Prime Minister; Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP); and Arlene Foster, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and First Minister in Northern Ireland during October 2018. This study examines: (1) to what extent (if any) were these women trivialized or stereotyped on account of their gender, and what linguistic or rhetorical strategies were used to do this?; (2) Were similar strategies applied in representing all of them, or were there particular differences?; and (3), how did the media represent the female party leaders as public speakers? Finally, (4) what do media representations tell us about the contours of public discourse on gender and political leadership? The corpus for this study consists of 60 online news articles collected for one month from the British quality newspapers The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph and The Times. The method of analysis is thematic analysis, which is a useful tool for finding patterns in large amounts of data. The political leaders were described within both negative and positive themes. Theresa May was described within themes of weak leadership, illustrated by the rhetorical use of war metaphors (being ‘under attack’). Nicola Sturgeon was described within conflicting themes of leadership, both positive (‘dutiful’ and ‘democratic’ leader), but also negative (‘unreliable’). Arlene Foster was thematically described as militant or violent by metaphorically ‘torpedoing’ or ‘shooting down’ others. The findings in this study suggest that leadership is still a very ‘masculine’ concept. Media text invokes the typically masculine attributes of physical strength, authority and decisiveness in its descriptions of female leaders, and that the metaphor ‘politics is war’ is widely used in political media discourse. Nyckelord: gender, leadership, thematic analysis, political media discourse Datum: 31.3.2020 Sidoantal: 90 Abstraktet godkänt som mognadsprov: Saara Oinonen Table of Contents 1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................................................... 1 2. BACKGROUND ....................................................................................................................................................... 2 2.1. GENDER AND LEADERSHIP .................................................................................................................................. 2 2.2. GENDER AND POLITICAL MEDIA .......................................................................................................................... 3 2.3. PREVIOUS STUDIES .............................................................................................................................................. 4 3. METHOD AND MATERIAL ................................................................................................................................ 10 3.1. CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS ...................................................................................................................... 10 3.1.1. Discourse ................................................................................................................................................. 11 3.2. THEMATIC ANALYSIS ........................................................................................................................................ 13 3.3. NEWSPAPERS SELECTED FOR THIS STUDY ......................................................................................................... 14 3.4. SELECTION OF ARTICLES ................................................................................................................................... 14 3.5. SELECTION OF THEMES ...................................................................................................................................... 15 3.6. THE BRITISH PRESS ........................................................................................................................................... 18 3.6.1. The British media tradition ..................................................................................................................... 18 3.6.2. A changed media landscape .................................................................................................................... 19 3.6.3. Tabloidization .......................................................................................................................................... 21 3.7. THE POLITICIANS SELECTED FOR THIS STUDY ................................................................................................... 23 3.8. CURRENT TOPICS IN THE SELECTED ARTICLES ................................................................................................... 27 3.9. LIMITATIONS ..................................................................................................................................................... 27 4. THEMES .................................................................................................................................................................. 28 4.1. OVERALL RESULTS ............................................................................................................................................ 28 4.2. THEMATIC ANALYSIS ........................................................................................................................................ 35 4.2.1. Theresa May ............................................................................................................................................ 37 4.2.2. Nicola Sturgeon ....................................................................................................................................... 40 4.2.3. Arlene Foster ........................................................................................................................................... 44 5. DISCUSSION .......................................................................................................................................................... 47 5.1. SUMMARY OF MAIN THEMES ............................................................................................................................. 47 5.2. THE WOMEN ...................................................................................................................................................... 49 5.2.1. Theresa May ............................................................................................................................................ 49 5.2.2. Nicola Sturgeon ....................................................................................................................................... 50 5.2.3. Arlene Foster ........................................................................................................................................... 50 5.3. DIFFERENCES AMONG THE ARTICLES ................................................................................................................ 51 5.4. THEMES ............................................................................................................................................................. 52 Saara Oinonen 5.4.1. Leadership ............................................................................................................................................... 52 5.4.2. Violence and war ..................................................................................................................................... 54 5.4.3. Power, strength and weakness ................................................................................................................ 56 5.4.4. Femaleness .............................................................................................................................................. 57 5.4.5. Archetypes of female authority ................................................................................................................ 59 5.4.6. Gender as a theme ................................................................................................................................... 63 5.4.7. Voice and power: women as political speakers ...................................................................................... 64 5.5. LINGUISTIC STRUCTURES IN THE CORPUS .......................................................................................................... 65 5.5.1. Linguistic forms of reference ..................................................................................................................