Gender, Persuasion, and Political Communication: A Comparative Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis of Public Addresses by Pakistani Politicians

Abstract

This paper explores the influence of gender in persuasion and politics as a means to build political power in political speeches in Pakistan by politicians. On this basis of understanding that leadership is practiced by use of language, the study explores whether male and female speakers have different rhetorical strategies that they use to establish legitimacy and congruence with the audience. The proposed study assumes comparative mixed methods study in the context of Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) with the quantitative corpus methodology and the interpretation of the findings through a qualitative lens, using the Critical Discourse Analysis and gender performance theory. A purposive sampling was used to compile a special corpus of transcribed speeches in order to achieve a representation of similar public events and political status of male and female politicians. Recurrent persuasive tendencies were identified using such tools as the analysis of key words, collocation analysis, pronoun analysis, stance analysis and modality analysis and applied to the Pakistan socio-political context. Results show that there are patterned variation and not absolute division. Rhetoric of urgency, confrontation, categorical commitment enjoy more frequent use by male politicians, building the power by force and mobilization. Female politicians are more likely to predict inclusion, service and joint advancement, to rationalize leadership using accountability and care. They both are convincing but take discursive paths. It suggests that to gain better knowledge about gendered political communication, the study should increase the multilingual corpora and include reception analysis as well as cross-national comparisons.