Abstract
The presence of female politicians in the political arena worldwide is becoming increasingly more conspicuous and undisputable. However, female politicians are constantly challenged to justify their worth in politics not only by their male counterparts but also by media and the public. One mechanism that enables them to ‘survive’ in such a competitive, male-dominated environment is to conform to the previously established linguistic practices of male politicians, which, unfortunately, frequently leads to female politicians receiving harsh backlash for resorting to such ‘unladylike’ mannerisms. In this paper, we explore the linguistic practices of a Macedonian female politician, the current mayor of the city of Skopje – Danela Arsovska, who with her relentless and uncompromising political stances, at times, resembles the former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, aka the ‘Iron Lady’. More specifically, critical discourse and pragmatic analysis are used to unravel the linguistic properties of her confrontational posts on her official FB profile in a period of one year (from March 2022 to March 2023), in which she either fends off the attacks hurled her way by her adversaries, or she herself challenges her opponents’ reasoning and actions. In addition, the paper investigates whether her posts elicit positive or negative reactions on the part of FB users and how these reactions via the linguistic chances employed in them mold the political profile of this female politician. Unsurprisingly, the results obtained indicate that the linguistic choices of this female politician in her adversarial posts, which are mainly marked by negative lexis, threats, promises and irony, bear resemblance to the ones of typical male politicians when faced with political conflicts and controversies.
Keywords: female politicians, political discourse, linguistic features.
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