Gender and affiliation differences in topic selection in U.S. congressional speeches

The aim of this paper was to study gender differences in topic choice selection using the corpus of speeches given in the 113th United States Congress. We also looked at whether there are topic choice selection differences with respect to party affiliation and chamber, and finally, whether conversat...

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Main Authors: Lenard Dragana Božić, Omazić Marija
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Sciendo 2018-12-01
Series:ExELL (Explorations in English Language and Linguistics)
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Online Access:https://doi.org/10.2478/exell-2020-0001
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author Lenard Dragana Božić
Omazić Marija
author_facet Lenard Dragana Božić
Omazić Marija
author_sort Lenard Dragana Božić
collection DOAJ
description The aim of this paper was to study gender differences in topic choice selection using the corpus of speeches given in the 113th United States Congress. We also looked at whether there are topic choice selection differences with respect to party affiliation and chamber, and finally, whether conversational topics chosen by male and female politicians correlate with any other category we measured in our corpus. The corpus was composed of 672 speeches by the female and 2,983 speeches by the male politicians. The speech transcripts were downloaded from the official repository Thomas and analyzed using the text analysis software Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) to identify the use of vocabulary related to seven conversational topics recorded by LIWC. The data was analyzed both quantitatively, using statistical analysis, and qualitatively, to determine if there are significant gender differences in speech topic selection. The analyses showed that there are overall gender and affiliation differences in topic selection by the male and female politicians in the 113th Congress, some confirming the trend of long-standing prevalence of home-related references in women’s speeches, and death and religion references in men’s speeches, others marking a social shift for some of the categories compared to previous studies on the topic, such as the increasing share of references to work, money achievement in women’s speeches, as well as women’s preference for security, and men’s preference for competitiveness, as signaled by their lexical choices. Further correlation test results recorded subtler differences which pointed to linguistic changes in stereotypization, such as women signaling less emotion and choosing more formal ways of expression.
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spelling doaj-art-f9ceba1c54dd4f259d77d4207ae4781e2025-01-31T08:34:31ZengSciendoExELL (Explorations in English Language and Linguistics)2303-48582018-12-016210512910.2478/exell-2020-0001exell-2020-0001Gender and affiliation differences in topic selection in U.S. congressional speechesLenard Dragana Božić0Omazić Marija1University of Osijek,CroatiaUniversity of Osijek,CroatiaThe aim of this paper was to study gender differences in topic choice selection using the corpus of speeches given in the 113th United States Congress. We also looked at whether there are topic choice selection differences with respect to party affiliation and chamber, and finally, whether conversational topics chosen by male and female politicians correlate with any other category we measured in our corpus. The corpus was composed of 672 speeches by the female and 2,983 speeches by the male politicians. The speech transcripts were downloaded from the official repository Thomas and analyzed using the text analysis software Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) to identify the use of vocabulary related to seven conversational topics recorded by LIWC. The data was analyzed both quantitatively, using statistical analysis, and qualitatively, to determine if there are significant gender differences in speech topic selection. The analyses showed that there are overall gender and affiliation differences in topic selection by the male and female politicians in the 113th Congress, some confirming the trend of long-standing prevalence of home-related references in women’s speeches, and death and religion references in men’s speeches, others marking a social shift for some of the categories compared to previous studies on the topic, such as the increasing share of references to work, money achievement in women’s speeches, as well as women’s preference for security, and men’s preference for competitiveness, as signaled by their lexical choices. Further correlation test results recorded subtler differences which pointed to linguistic changes in stereotypization, such as women signaling less emotion and choosing more formal ways of expression.https://doi.org/10.2478/exell-2020-0001u.s. congressional speechestopic selectiongender differenceslinguistic changestereotypization
spellingShingle Lenard Dragana Božić
Omazić Marija
Gender and affiliation differences in topic selection in U.S. congressional speeches
ExELL (Explorations in English Language and Linguistics)
u.s. congressional speeches
topic selection
gender differences
linguistic change
stereotypization
title Gender and affiliation differences in topic selection in U.S. congressional speeches
title_full Gender and affiliation differences in topic selection in U.S. congressional speeches
title_fullStr Gender and affiliation differences in topic selection in U.S. congressional speeches
title_full_unstemmed Gender and affiliation differences in topic selection in U.S. congressional speeches
title_short Gender and affiliation differences in topic selection in U.S. congressional speeches
title_sort gender and affiliation differences in topic selection in u s congressional speeches
topic u.s. congressional speeches
topic selection
gender differences
linguistic change
stereotypization
url https://doi.org/10.2478/exell-2020-0001
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AT omazicmarija genderandaffiliationdifferencesintopicselectioninuscongressionalspeeches