A Gender-Based Approach to Parliamentary Discourse the Andalusian Parliament
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politics, society and culture discourse approaches to A Gender-based Approach to Parliamentary Discourse The Andalusian Parliament edited by Catalina Fuentes-Rodríguez and Gloria Álvarez-Benito 68 JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY A Gender-based Approach to Parliamentary Discourse Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture (DAPSAC) issn 1569-9463 The editors invite contributions that investigate political, social and cultural processes from a linguistic/discourse-analytic point of view. The aim is to publish monographs and edited volumes which combine language-based approaches with disciplines concerned essentially with human interaction – disciplines such as political science, international relations, social psychology, social anthropology, sociology, economics, and gender studies. For an overview of all books published in this series, please see http://benjamins.com/catalog/dapsac General Editors Jo Angouri, Andreas Musolff and Johann Wolfgang Unger University of Warwick / University of East Anglia / Lancaster University [email protected]; [email protected] and [email protected] Founding Editors Paul Chilton and Ruth Wodak Advisory Board Christine Anthonissen J.R. Martin Louis de Saussure Stellenbosch University University of Sydney University of Neuchâtel Michael Billig Jacob L. Mey Hailong Tian Loughborough University University of Southern Denmark Tianjin Foreign Studies Piotr Cap Greg Myers University University of Łódź Lancaster University Joanna Thornborrow Paul Chilton John Richardson Cardiff University Lancaster University Loughborough University Ruth Wodak Teun A. van Dijk Luisa Martín Rojo Lancaster University Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid Sue Wright Barcelona Christina Schäffner University of Portsmouth Konrad Ehlich Aston University Free University, Berlin Volume 68 A Gender-based Approach to Parliamentary Discourse. The Andalusian Parliament Edited by Catalina Fuentes-Rodríguez and Gloria Álvarez-Benito A Gender-based Approach to Parliamentary Discourse The Andalusian Parliament Edited by Catalina Fuentes-Rodríguez Gloria Álvarez-Benito Universidad de Sevilla John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of 8 the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984. doi 10.1075/dapsac.68 Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress: lccn 2016041070 (print) / 2016052030 (e-book) isbn 978 90 272 0659 6 (Hb) isbn 978 90 272 6633 0 (e-book) © 2016 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com Table of contents Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 Gloria Álvarez-Benito and Catalina Fuentes-Rodríguez Chapter 1 Women in the Andalusian Parliament 27 Catalina Fuentes-Rodríguez Chapter 2 Intensification, identity and gender in the Andalusian Parliament 35 Catalina Fuentes-Rodríguez Chapter 3 Gender differences in enumerative series 61 Ester Brenes Peña Chapter 4 Argumentation and face-threatening acts: The non-literal quotation 77 José M. López Martín Chapter 5 Pseudo-desemantisation as a discursive strategy in political discourse 93 Juan Manuel García Platero and M.ª Auxiliadora Castillo Carballo Chapter 6 Lexical colloquialisation in commissions of the Andalusian Parliament 109 Marina González Sanz vi Table of contents Chapter 7 Emotional argumentation in political discourse 129 Esperanza Alcaide Lara, Aurelia Carranza Márquez and Catalina Fuentes-Rodríguez Chapter 8 Gender differences in eye-contact behaviour in parliamentary discourse 161 Gloria Álvarez-Benito and Isabel Íñigo-Mora Chapter 9 Time, gender and parliamentary discourse 195 Antonio M. Bañón Hernández, Juan Manuel Arcos Urrutia and Samantha Requena Romero Conclusions 213 Catalina Fuentes-Rodríguez and Gloria Álvarez-Benito Subject index 219 Acknowledgements This book is the result of a four year-long project titledLa perspectiva de género en el lenguaje parlamentario andaluz (The gender perspective in the Andalusian parlia- mentary discourse). We thank the Junta de Andalucía (Andalusian Government) and FEDER (ERDF, European Regional Development Fund) for providing fund- ing for the development of the project (P10-Hum 5872). We gratefully acknowledge the assistance, advice and counsel offered by a number of researchers who participated in three seminars on political discourse held at the University of Sevilla (2012, 2013 and 2014). We would also like to thank them for their interesting commentaries on our research at different stages of the project. Introduction Gloria Álvarez-Benito and Catalina Fuentes-Rodríguez Universidad de Sevilla, Spain This book presents a study on parliamentary discourse from a gender perspective. We have chosen the Andalusian Parliament because it is a gender-balanced parlia- ment, the first one in Spain. This is a corpus-based study, a novelty in the scientific panorama of political studies. Previous research on political and parliamentary discourse has generally fo- cused on legitimisation and delegitimisation strategies and their relation with power from a global perspective (Van Dijk 1998, 2002, 2005; Charaudeau 2005, Van Dijk and Wodak 2000). Besides, previous gender-based research has mainly examined gender and social roles and has also attempted to provide a sociological explanation of electoral campaigns (Campbell 1998, Ilie 2010, Mayhead et al. 2005, Wodak 2003). However, the literature does not abound in corpus-based studies of political discourse centred on the analysis of linguistic mechanisms that might be affected by gender differences. In addition, no research has been conducted to examine whether men and women use different communicative strategies. Our corpus-based analysis is the Andalusian Parliament because it is the first Parliament in Spain with equal representation of men and women since the eighth term of office. This is the reason why the eighth legislature has been selected. The main aim of this book is the identification and localisation of linguistic mechanisms and strategies used by MPs to persuade and perform their roles in parliament. The analysis has been carried out from the perspective of linguistic ar- gumentation. It complements the type of analysis that is carried out for most gen- der studies in the literature, generally from a sociological perspective. Therefore, we want to examine the plausibility of the hypothesis on the speech of women and men and describe how they perceive their roles in parliament. This book fills a gap in the existing literature on parliamentary discourse by: a) being a corpus-based analysis; b) demonstrating that gender is not a relevant variable in the selection of communicative strategies and therefore stereotyping about feminine and masculine discourse is not valuable; c) showing that parlia- mentary discourse is characterised by a professional style, thereby including its doi 10.1075/dapsac.68.01alv © 2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company 2 Gloria Álvarez-Benito and Catalina Fuentes-Rodríguez study in professional discourse; d) dealing with expressions and strategies of ar- gumentation (describing a selection of the most relevant strategies in the corpus under study); e) following a holistic perspective, including pragmalinguistic, so- ciopragmatic, ideological studies and sociological perspectives about communi- cation, such as face-work, politeness and identity studies. The latter aspects have been examined in the analysis of public discourse (political and media discourse, Fuentes-Rodríguez ed. 2013). Herein we show how the main goal of the MP’s in- tervention in debates is identity construction as a member of the government or the opposition. Ideology, face-work and argumentation are interconnected in this type of discourse. In this book, the reader can find a description of many of the mechanisms and strategies used by politicians in parliament. This description will lead the reader to conclude that the main goals of parliamentary discourse are persuasion, face-work and role-playing. This book is a necessary tool for any researcher interested in the description of public discourse, the ritualisation of ideological speeches and a global perspec- tive of discourse analysis. The analysis of argumentation that we are interested in is descriptive, closer to the argumentative theory of Anscombre and Ducrot (1983). We have chosen a pragmalinguistic approach that is not so commonly used in the literature to describe the mechanisms used by MPs in parliament. Other approaches on argumentation are the new rhetoric perspective of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1989) and Toulmin (1958) or the pragma-dialectics of Van Eemeren-Grootendorst (2004). The goal of the latter perspective is to resolve con- frontation; however, from our perspective in parliamentary discourse, the goal is to be the winner in confrontation, not to resolve it: The pragma-dialectical model of a critical discussion is a theoretically motivated system for resolution-oriented discourse. In a critical discussion, the parties at- tempt to reach agreement about the acceptability of the stand-points at issue by finding out whether or not these standpoints are defensible against doubt or criti- cism. To be able to achieve this purpose, the dialectical procedure for conducting a critical discussion cannot