الفهرس 
Theoretical background and literature reviewOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
Abstract
Examining the language of politicians to uncover their intentions and potentials is a dominating field in language analysis that many pioneer linguists focused on. Since the beginning of human history language, the ability to use language was one of the main areas of differentiation between human beings and other creatures. For that reason, language variation that occurs as a result of gender became an important area of investigation in linguistics. The linguistic features of the speeches presented in the study are critically analyzed to prove that gender is a factor that can cause linguistic differences between both female and male speeches. Consequently, eight political speeches of eight different gendered and different cultured speakers were chosen. The eight speeches tackle two different topics.
Objectives of the study
The current study aims
a- To uncover the functional grammatical choices differences and similarities between male and female politicians.
b- To find out the grammatical differences that are associated with the change of the topic of speech.
c- To explore the connotative and denotative meanings of the most frequently used nouns for each gender.
d- To explore the ideological side of speakers from different nationalities.
Significance of the study
The significance of this study lies in the observation that standard varieties of language are not subjected to change. However, this study proves that gender in the political language is a factor that results in linguistic variation. Many linguists have examined gender through different discourses. However, nearly none has used a political medium to examine the linguistic variation that is based on gender differences. Consequently, the researcher chooses this significant observation to study more about the linguistic variation between eight selected female and male speeches, focusing on the functional grammatical and semantic variations.
Research Questions
This study attempts to find answers to the following questions:
1- What are the linguistic features found in both male and female public political speeches?
2- What are the grammatical areas of differences and similarities between the speakers of both genders?
3- How does the topic of speaking affect the grammatical and semantic choices of either gender?
4- What are the dominating connotative and denotative nouns in each gender speech?
Chapter: Two
This chapter is divided into two sections. The first deals with the theoretical frame work of the study, while the second presents the previous researches on the topic of the study.
A Historical Overview of Critical Discourse Analysis
Discourse analysis, also called discourse studies, was developed during the 1970s as an academic field. CDA deals with linguistic and psychosocial approaches in a different way by analyzing the data from a critical scope. It was mainly developed to examine the relationship between discourse and society. Three concepts are indispensably important in all CDA: the concept of power, the idea of history, and ideology. The origin of CDA lies in Rhetoric, Text linguistics, Anthropology, Philosophy, Socio-Psychology, Cognitive Science.
Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar theory
Halliday’s systemic functional grammar theory can be used to explore the hidden deep meaning of discourse. SFG is the study of the relationship between language and its functions in social settings. According to Halliday (2014), when people speak or write, they produce text; and text is what listeners and readers engage with and interpret. Thi et al. (2017) state that SFG connects ”language”, ”mind” and ”the world” (p.209).
The componential semantic approach
Componential analysis is based on the presumption that the meaning of a word is composed of semantic components. All semantic elements found in a word are not equally important. According to Nida and Tiber (1982), there are three types of meaning; grammatical meaning, referential meaning, and connotative meaning.
Denotative and Connotative Meanings
In Nida’s view, the denotative meaning is generally thought of as ”dictionary meaning” Garrison ( 1985) states that words have denotation (meaning or definition) and connotation (suggestion, overstore) (p.42).
Corpus Linguistics
Corpus Linguistics, as an important area of Computational Linguistics, provides large quantities of language databases accumulated systematically from various fields of actual language use following some statistical methods and techniques of data sampling.
Previous Studies
1- Tagliamonte (2012) stated that there is a consensus among sociolinguists (e.g., Wolfram, 1969; Labov, 1972; Trudgill, 1983; Milroy, Milroy, Hartley & Walshaw, 1994; Cheshire, 2002) that of “all the sociolinguistic principles, the clearest and most consistent one is the contrast between women and men”, which is defined as the ‘Gender Effect’ (p.32).
2- It was assumed and proved in many previous studies as Anna (2018), Zemojtel et al. (2017), and Božić (2016) that each gender has its features which may result in a speech production that appears to be different from that produced by the other gender.
3- Khanya and Hamzeloub (2014) followed Halliday and Hasan’s (SFG theory of language as a method of analyzing the rhetorical structure of political speeches, intending to explore the Generic Structure Potential of political speeches (p.918). They concluded that “Euphemizing is one of the main exigencies of being a dictator” (p.922).
Significance of the study
Language variation has been the focus of many previous studies. Gender is one of the social factors that leads to language variation among speakers. Most of those studies examine the language variations through an everyday language context. However, this study aims at studying the linguistic variation in political discourses that are the result of gender variation. In that sense, this study is different from others in that it challenges that public political speeches include linguistic variation between male and female speakers. Moreover, gendered language studies usually focus on one linguistic field e.g. semantics, grammar, phonology, syntax or stylistics. However, this study attempts to provide differences on both the grammatical and semantic levels. Moreover, the majority of researches select data for speakers with the same nationality. On the contrary, the current study investigated the linguistic differences between eight speakers with different nationalities. This is for the sake of getting a wider view of the variation between females and males in using the English language. Considering the diversity of the speakers’ nationalities, an ideological social interpretation between the same gender speakers is added.
Chapter: Three
This chapter is devoted to the methodology, data sources, data collection procedures and data analysis procedures.
Research Method
The study focused on both quantitative and qualitative research methods. The quantitative research approach is regarded as the use of statistical data as a tool for saving time and resources. The qualitative approach in this study gives an understanding to the differences and similarities between male and female speakers.
Data Sources
The corpus of the study consists of different political speeches for different gendered world-wide political leaders. The female speeches are represented via four speeches uttered by Hillary Clinton, Michael Obama, Halimah Yacob, and Julia Gillard. On the other hand, the voice of male speakers is represented through four speeches uttered by Donald Trump, Cyril Ramaphosa, Michael D Higgins, and Antonia Guterres. The selected data are gathered from different websites that are specialized in publishing official political speeches transcripts.
Chapter: Four
In this quantitative and qualitative study, a corpus-driven percentage is offered for the grammatical and lexical choices made by either gender. The analysis presented in this chapter is divided into two sections. The first is devoted to the tokens, words, sentences, and documents frequencies and percentages in each theme. The second tackles the meta-functions analysis in both female and male speeches.
Chapter: Five
This chapter is devoted to a detailed analysis of the five most frequently used nouns in the speeches of the two genders. First, frequencies and percentages for the five most used nouns are done. Then, a connotative and denotative meaning interpretation for those nouns choices is provided using Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. This is to investigate each gender lexical choices and to reveal the linguistic attitude adopted by each of them.
Chapter: Six
This chapter presents the conclusion of the study based on the analysis and discussion of the data carried out in chapter four and five.
Main findings
The study showed that both male and female speakers used plenty of linguistic features in their speeches. The features range between grammatical and semantic areas. The study showed eight main differences and eight main similarities between the two genders. Both groups gave the researcher a mere light on their behind thoughts through their denotative and connotative connotations. The research questions of this study were answered.