STANCE TAKING, GENDER IDENTITY, AND ROMANIAN WOMEN POLITICIANS IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTORAL CAMPAIGNS

Abstract

Objectives This study aims at presenting an updated state-of-the-art review of the most relevant approaches to gender identity, stance taking, and political communication, highlighting the way in which society contributes to constructing gender identity, intersubjectivity, and discourse practices in the electoral communication. Material and methods. Relevant articles published between 1995 and 2020 on stancetaking, identity, intersubjectivity speech acts were searched in two access platforms to the scientific literature. The main concepts indexing identity markers and intersubjectivity (interactant pronouns, stances, non-figurative and figurative syntagms, speech acts) were preserved. The research shed light through a quantitative and qualitative discourse analysis how speech acts, modalities, grammatical tools and figures of speech were used as a resource for taking a stand, as well as a strategy for the gender identity constructing. The corpus were composed by three categories of addresses delivered by the ex-prime minister Viorica Dăncilă during the 2019 presidential electoral campaign. Results. The analysis identified at the macro and micro level the construction of the positions, themes and interactive markers in the speeches delivered between August, 2019 and November 22, 2019 in the light of the positioning theory appraisal theory and the concept of conversational history. Conclusion. The double opening (micro and macro level) allowed us to bridge the intersubjective and gender dimension of positioning with epistemic and emotional aspects, highlighting also differences and similarities with the masculine presidential style.