The Discursive Portraits of Female Politicians in the Contemporary American Press

Politics and its coexistence with media reflect sociocultural changes through language. Being socially shaped and shaping reality simultaneously, language use is of particular research relevance (Fairclough, 1995, p. 55). However, so as to grasp the sociocultural shift in its entirety, media products should be viewed as a system of semiotic activities, including verbal, non-verbal and visual means of communication. As women increase their presence in American politics, it becomes possible to analyze the way they are represented in media discourse, press in particular. This paper is based on the existing approaches to defining the term “discourse” and conducting critical discourse analysis. In order to introduce an innovative approach called discursive portrait, works written by scholars in social and linguistic studies, such as Michael Foucault, Christopher Hart, T.A. Van Dijk, and Norman Fairclough, are taken into consideration. In addition to CDA and discourse a related but differing approach to portraiture, namely speech portrait, is explored and juxtaposed with discursive portrait. The ultimate goal of this paper is to clarify what a discourse portrait is and to implement qualitative intertextual analysis on the basis of the New York Times articles. Keywords: discourse, critical discourse analysis, CDA, discursive portrait, media, politician