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3. A Woman Warrior or a Forgotten Concubine? Verbal Construction of a Feminist Politician in Taiwan
- Hong Kong University Press, HKU
- Chapter
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A Woman Warrior or a Forgotten Concubine? 53 Introduction In the past three decades, there has been an extensive literature investigating ways in which women’s and men’s talk differs. In general, analyses of typical female ways of interacting have identified features which can be described as cooperative, facilitative and “other oriented,” while male talk has been characterized as typically competitive, argumentative, and verbally aggressive. In addition, women are found to be more comfortable in private, informal contexts of talk, whereas men are generally more willing than women to contribute in more public or formal contexts (Coates 1986; Tannen 1990). The past decade has witnessed an increased number of women entering professions dominated by men — as lawyers, doctors, business executives, members of parliament, for example — as a consequence of the feminist movement and equal opportunities legislation. However, in the male-dominated public domain, the discourse pattern of male speakers has become the established norm. Thus, women are faced with a double-bind situation when entering the public domain: they are urged to adopt the adversarial, information-focused style of discourse in public spheres, but when they do so, they are perceived as aggressive, confrontational, and “unfeminine.” Lakoff (1990) has pointed out that in politics women have faced this dilemma in a particularly acute form, for they must act, if not speak, more aggressively than men to convince the electorate that they can be trusted with their country. She observed that female politicians can reach the top office only in parliamentary systems, where they have not had to present themselves directly to the electorate as non-incumbents in order to achieve national office. In a system of direct presidential election such as the U.S., all the hidden prejudice and assumptions about role and propriety surface when a woman is on the brink of achieving national office. This has happened in 1984 with Geraldine Ferraro, 3 A Woman Warrior or a Forgotten Concubine? Verbal Construction of a Feminist Politician in Taiwan Sai-hua Kuo 54 Sai-hua Kuo the running mate of the Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale. In the TV debates, Ferraro presented herself as informed and lucid, and she outperformed her opponent George Bush. Yet the next day pollsters declared Bush the “winner.” No one had much to say about why or how. The answer is that Ferraro lost because she dared to speak up in public against a man. However, Lakoff’s claim, similar to what she has maintained in her (1975) pioneering study Language and Woman’s Place, was based on her impressionistic observations rather than on systematic linguistic analysis. Adopting the critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach, Fairclough (1989, 1995) investigated the speech style of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. According to Fairclough, Thatcher has successfully displayed the tough, resolute, uncompromising, and aggressive political leadership without being perceived as unfeminine. In a BBC interview analyzed by Fairclough, Thatcher was frequently found to reject the interviewer’s interruptions and attempts to control her turns by the polite but firm “please let me just go on.” Fairclough claims that such turn-taking is one expression of Thatcher’s toughness and determination. Another is the use of look, which marks her utterance as putting somebody in their place or forcefully correcting their misapprehensions. In addition, Thatcher uses modalities in a skillful and strategic way. While some of modalities in her speech signal authoritativeness (e.g. have got to, can’t), others give an impression of self-effacement (i.e. I wonder, perhaps, suppose). In sum, Thatcher has successfully combined traditional properties of authoritativeness with a tough and aggressive style, and with being a woman. Previous to Fairclough’s study, Thatcher’s communicative style had drawn attention from other discourse analysts. For instance, based on two televised interviews, Beattie (1982) analyzed and compared the speech and conversational styles of Thatcher and Jim Callaghan, then leader of the opposition Labor Party, with a focus on turn-taking and interruption. He has found that despite the fact that Thatcher is interrupted significantly more frequently in her interview than Callaghan is in his, and her speech rate is slower, there is a widespread view among the general public that Thatcher is domineering in interviews, whereas Callaghan is generally viewed as relaxed and affable. Beattie suggests that Thatcher’s determination not to yield the floor when interrupted may lead to this (mis)perception. He also points out that Thatcher may be interrupted frequently because she unintentionally sends out a set of paralinguistic and...