The study investigates how language is used to construct, reconstruct and deconstruct gender in opinion articles in Nigerian newspapers. Drawing on tools and techniques of analysis from critical discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, systemic functional grammar and cognitive linguistics, the author analyses the many complex and subtle ways in which gender is conceptualized and represented in the newspapers. He shows how the use of some linguistic features and discursive practices contributes to the (re)construction of certain gender identities, roles and power relations between men and women in society. The book contributes to research on language and gender from a non-western perspective.

This new study reconciles cognitive metaphor theory with Critical Discourse Analysis to offer a fresh approach to the study of metaphor. In applying this framework to a substantial corpus of texts from business magazines, the author shows how metaphors of war, sports and evolutionary struggle are used to construct business as a masculinized social domain. In view of the subtle but pervasive socio-cognitive impact of these metaphors, the study raises the question of possible alternatives and the scope for change in business media discourse.

This collection offers an essential introduction to the ways in which feminist linguistics and critical discourse analysis have contributed to our understanding of gender and sex. The contributors provide both a review of the literature, as well as an opportunity to follow the most recent debates in this area.

Using a discourse analysis, Dustin Harp investigates media during the 2016 US presidential election to explore how traditional (patriarchal) and feminist ideas about gender played out during the campaign. The book illustrates how these two ideologies competed for space and struggled for discursive authority. A broad range of media texts is examined, and "gender moments," where gender became a dominant part of the political conversation, are identified. These include the "nasty woman" and "grab them by the pussy" comments of Donald Trump and the "woman card" played by, and against, Hillary Clinton. Furthermore, Harp reveals how binary notions of gender and stereotypical ideas of how men and women should behave, look, and sound structured the ways Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were talked about in the media. As a counterpoint, the research also shows the ways feminist ideologies worked against the sexism and misogyny and became mainstream in media discourse during the campaign. Students and researchers of Gender Studies will find that the "gender moments" in Gender in the 2016 US Presidential Election tell a broader story about women, gender expectations, and power. They offer important and timely insights about misogyny and sexual harassment in contemporary US culture and feminist resistance in a mediated public sphere.

Today, gender and gender identity is at the forefront of discussion as the plight of women around the world and issues of gender equality and human rights have become an international concern for politicians, government agencies, social activists, and the general public. Discourse Analysis as a Tool for Understanding Gender Identity, Representation, and Equality provides a thorough analysis of what language use and linguistic expression can teach us about gender identity in addition to current discussions on topics related to women’s rights and gender inequality. Focusing on issues related to women in developing countries, workplace inequalities, and social freedom, this publication is an essential reference source for researchers, graduate-level students, and theorists in the fields of sociology, women’s studies, economics, and government.

Deborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand spent nearly four years (in cloth and paper) on The New York Times Best Seller list and has sold over a million and a half copies. Clearly, Tannen's insights into how and why women and men so often misunderstand each other when they talk has touched a nerve. For years a highly respected scholar in the field of linguistics, she has now become widely known for her work on how conversational style differences associated with gender affect relationships. Her life work has demonstrated how close and intelligent analysis of conversation can reveal the extraordinary complexities of social relationships--including relationships between men and women. Now, in Gender and Discourse, Tannen has gathered together six of her scholarly essays, including her newest and previously unpublished work in which language and gender are examined through the lens of "sex-class-linked" patterns, rather than "sex-linked" patterns. These essays provide a theoretical backdrop to her best-selling books--and an informative introduction which discusses her field of linguistics, describes the research methods she typically uses, and addresses the controversies surrounding her field as well as some misunderstandings of her work. (She argues, for instance, that her cultural approach to gender differences does not deny that men dominate women in society, nor does it ascribe gender differences to women's "essential nature.") The essays themselves cover a wide range of topics. In one, she analyzes a number of conversational strategies--such as interruption, topic raising, indirection, and silence--and shows that, contrary to much work on language and gender, no strategy exclusively expresses dominance or submissiveness in conversation--interruption (or overlap) can be supportive, silence and indirection can be used to control. It is the interactional context, the participants' individual styles, and the interaction of their styles, Tannen shows, that result in the balance of power. She also provides a fascinating analysis of four groups of males and females (second-, sixth-, and tenth-grade students, and twenty-five year olds) conversing with their best friends, and she includes an early article co-authored with Robin Lakoff that presents a theory of conversational strategy, illustrated by analysis of dialogue in Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage. Readers interested in the theoretical framework behind Tannen's work will find this volume fascinating. It will be sure to interest anyone curious about the crucial yet often unnoticed role that language and gender play in our daily lives.

This book examines the professional discourses produced in women’s media in Malaysia and the subject positions that they make available for career women. Drawing on feminist critical discourse analysis, critical stylistics and feminist conversation analysis, it identifies a range of gendered discourses around employment and motherhood that are underpinned by postfeminism and neoliberal feminism. Through close linguistic analysis of magazine and newspaper articles and radio talk, the study reveals that these discourses substitute balance, individual success, self-transformation and positive feelings for structural change, and entrench the very issues hindering gender workplace equality. Chapters discuss topics such as sexism, work-family balance, extensive and intensive mothering, breadwinning, gender stereotypes, beauty work, ‘synthetic sisterhood’, media practices and gender equality policies. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of language and gender, discourse analysis, and media, communication and cultural studies as well as policy-makers, media practitioners and feminist activists.

The first collection to bring together well-known scholars writing from feminist perspectives within Critical Discourse Analysis. The theoretical structure of CDA is illustrated with empirical research from a range of locations (from Europe to Asia; the USA to Australasia) and domains (from parliament to the classroom; the media to the workplace).

Written in a clear and accessible style, with lots of examples from Anglo-American media, Gender and the Media offers a critical introduction to the study of gender in the media, and an up-to-date assessment of the key issues and debates. Eschewing a straightforwardly positive or negative assessment the book explores the contradictory character of contemporary gender representations, where confident expressions of girl power sit alongside reports of epidemic levels of anorexia among young women, moral panics about the impact on men of idealized representations of the 'six-pack', but near silence about the pervasive re-sexualization of women's bodies, along with a growing use of irony and playfulness that render critique extremely difficult. The book looks in depth at five areas of media - talk shows, magazines, news, advertising, and contemporary screen and paperback romances - to examine how representations of women and men are changing in the twenty-first century, partly in response to feminist, queer and anti-racist critique. Gender and the Media is also concerned with the theoretical tools available for analysing representations. A range of approaches from semiotics to postcolonial theory are discussed, and Gill asks how useful notions such as objectification, backlash, and positive images are for making sense of gender in today's Western media. Finally, Gender and the Media also raises questions about cultural politics - namely, what forms of critique and intervention are effective at a moment when ironic quotation marks seem to protect much media content from criticism and when much media content - from Sex and the City to revenge adverts - can be labelled postfeminist. This is a book that will be of particular interest to students and scholars in gender and media studies, as well as those in sociology and cultural studies more generally.