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WOMEN'S POLITICAL DISCOURSE IN CROATIA: Linguistic and Rhetorical Peculiarities in Political Speeches by Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović

Women in Croatia, as well as women worldwide, are struggling with many stereotypes in different aspects of social life (e.g. woman as sexual object, woman as mother etc.). These stereotypes affect their professional lives. Women politicians are trying to get out of the stereotypical gender roles and therefore they face various resistance and disapproval. The main reason for this is that traditionally there wasn't a place for them in politics. The number of women in politics in Croatia is rising, from 5% in the 1st assembly of the Croatian Parliament at the beginning of the 1990's to 26% in the last, 7th assembly. The paper deals with linguistic and rhetorical analysis of the Croatian women’s political discourse, the discourse of the president Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, to be exact. One can recognize certain characteristics in women’s political discourse, e.g. themes that are typically connected with women – care of elderly and helpless, children education, relationship among people. Women politicians very often use expressive language, for example phrases such as “with pride”, “I am sorry”, “I would like”, “I wish”. They also use polite language, such as: “he is very honest, fine, refined and just politician”, and modal expressions, such as “allow me”, “if I can ask”, “dear friends”. Women speech in politics is characterized by making the arguments from authority, and women also enrich their speech with figures and tropes, especially metaphors. This research shows whether there are some linguistic and rhetorical peculiarities in the female political discourse in Croatia.

political discourse, gendered speech, feminine style, masculine style, women's language, presidential rhetoric

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