Article published in:
Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict
Vol. 5:1 (2017) ► pp. 30–56

Addressing women in the Greek parliament

Institutionalized confrontation or sexist aggression?

| University of the Aegean, Greece

In accordance with numerous studies highlighting aspects of political and parliamentary discourse that concern the rhetoric of political combat, verbal attacks and offensive language choices are shown to be rather common in the context of a highly adversarial parliamentary system such as the Greek. In the present study, however, the analysis of excerpts of parliamentary discourse addressed to women reveals not just aspects of the organization of rival political encounters but, as far as female MPs are concerned, aggressive and derogatory forms of speech that directly attack the gender of the addressees. Drawing on data from video-recordings, the official proceedings of parliamentary sittings, and the media (2012–2015), the present study investigates aggressive/sexist discourse within this context. The theoretical issues addressed concern the impoliteness end of the politeness/politic speech/impoliteness continuum in the light of extreme cases of conflict in political/parliamentary discourse.

Keywords: political/parliamentary discourse, aggression, sexism, politic speech, im/politeness, conflict


This article is currently available as a sample article.

Published online: 16 October 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.5.1.02geo

Full-text

Addressing women in the Greek parliament
References

[ p. 54 ]References

Alvanoudi, Angeliki
2014 Grammatical Gender in Interaction. Cultural and Cognitive Aspects. Leiden/Boston: Brill.Google Scholar
Androutsopoulos, Jannis
2010 “The Study of Language and Space in Media Discourse.” In Language and Space: An International Handbook of Linguistic Variation. Volume I, edited by Peter Auer, and Jurgen E. Schmidt, 740–758. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Archakis, Argyris, and Villy Tsakona
2010 “ ‘The Wolf Wakes up inside them, Grows Werewolf Hair and Reveals all their Bullying’: The Representation of Parliamentary Discourse in Greek Newspapers.” Journal of Pragmatics 42:912–923. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Arundale, Robert B.
2010 “Constituting Face in Conversation: Face, Facework and Interactional Achievement.” Journal of Pragmatics 42:2078–2105. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Atkinson, Maxwell J., and John Heritage
(eds) 1984 Structures of Social Action. Studies in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Attenborough, Frederick
2014 “Rape is Rape (except when it’s not). The Media Recontextualisation and Violence against Women.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 2(2):183–203. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bou-Franch, Patricia
2013 “Domestic Violence and Public Participation in the Media: The Case of Citizen Journalism.” Gender and Language 7(3):275–302. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2014 “An Introduction to Language Aggression against Women.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 2(2):177–182. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bou-Franch, Patricia, and Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich
2014 “Gender Ideology and Social Identity Processes in Online Language Aggression against Women.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 2(2):226–248. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen Levinson
[1978]1987 Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chouliaraki, Lilie, and Norman Fairclough
1999 Discourse in Late Modernity: Rethinking Critical Discourse Analysis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Christie, Christine
2005 “Politeness and the Linguistic Construction of Gender in Parliament: An Analysis of Transgressions and Apology Bebaviour”. Working Papers in the Web 3. http://​extra​.shu​.ac​.uk​/wpw​/politeness​/christie​.htm
Culpeper, Jonathan
2005 “Impoliteness and Entertainment in the Television Quiz Show: The Weakest Link .” Journal of Politeness Research 1:35–72. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dersley, Ian, and Antony J. Wootton
2001 “In the Heat of a Sequence: Interactional Features Preceding Walkouts from Argumentative Talk.” Language in Society 30:611–638.Google Scholar
Eelen, Gino
2001 A Critique of Politeness Theories. Manchester: St Jerome.Google Scholar
Galen, Britt Rachelle, and Marion K. Underwood
1997 “A Developmental Investigation of Social Aggression among Children.” Developmental Psychology 33:589–600. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar
2013 “Introduction: Face, Identity and Im/politeness. Looking Backward, Moving Forward: From Goffman to Practice Theory.” Journal of Politeness Research 9(1):1–33. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2015 “Globalization, Transnational Identities and Conflict Talk: The Complexity of the Latino Identity.” Paper presented in the 9th International Im/Politeness Conference “Im/politeness & Globalisation”, Athens 1–3 July, 2015.
[ p. 55 ]
Georgakopoulou, Alexandra
2013 “Small Stories and Social Media: The Role of Narrative Stancetaking in the Circulation of a Greek News Story.” Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies, Paper 100. https://​www​.academia​.edu​/3490252
Georgalidou, Marianthi
2009 “Gender Differences in the Discourse of Greek Children Play-groups: The Negotiation of Control Acts in Single and Mixed-Gender Interactions.” Gender and Language 3(2):209–248.Google Scholar
2011 ““Stop Caressing the Ears of the Hooded”: Political Humor in times of Conflict”. In Studies in Political Humor, edited by Villy Tsakona, and Diana Popa, 83–108. Amsterdam/ Philadlphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Georgalidou, Marianthi, and Sofia Lampropoulou
(2016) “Grammatical Gender and Language Sexism in the Documents of the Greek Public Administration.” Glossologia 24: 23–43. [in Greek]Google Scholar
Goodwin-Harness, Marjorie
2006 The Hidden Life of Girls. Games of Stance, Status and Exclusion. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Harris, Sandra
2000 “Being Politically Impolite: Extending Politeness Theory to Adversarial Political Discourse.” Discourse and Society 12(4): 451–472. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hutchby, Ian, and Robin Wooffitt
2008 Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Ilie, Cornelia
2001 “Unparliamentary Language: Insults as Cognitive Forms of Ideological Confrontation.” In Language and Ideology. Volume II: Descriptive Cognitive Approaches, edited by René Dirven, Roslyn M. Frank, and Cornelia Ilie, 235–263. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lambropoulou, Sofia, and Marianthi Georgalidou
(2017) “Sexist Language in Greek Public Discourse: When Gender Exclusive Forms Become a Matter of Grammatical Correctness.” Women Studies International Forum 60: 49–57. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Makri-Tsilipakou, Marianthi
2014 “Practices of Sociolinguistic Categorization: Membership Categories”. In 11th International Conference on Greek Linguistics. Selected Papers, edited by George Kotzoglou et al., 19–45. Rhodes: Laboratory of Linguistics of the SE Mediterranean Studies, University of the Aegean. [in Greek]Google Scholar
Mills, Sara
2003 “Third Wave Feminist Linguistics and the Analysis of Sexism.” DAOL: Third Wave Feminist Linguistics. file://​​/F:​/%CE%98%CE%95%CE%9C%CE%91%CE%A4%CE%91​/DAOL​_%20Third%20Wave%20Feminist%20Linguistics​_.html
Mullany, Louise
2007 Gendered Discourse in Professional Communication. Basingstoke: Palgrave. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Nekvapil, Jiří, and Ivan Leudar
2002 “Sequential Structures in Media Dialogical Networks.” Czech Sociological Review 38: 483–500. [in Czech]Google Scholar
Pavlidou, Theodosia-Soula
2002 Language-Gender-Sex. Thessaloniki: Paratiritis. [in Greek]Google Scholar
Pomerantz, Annita
1984 “Agreeing and Disagreeing with Assessments: Some Features of Preferred/Dispreferred Turn Shapes”. In Structures of Social Action. Studies in Conversation Analysis, edited by Maxwell J. Atkinson and John Heritage, 57–101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A.
2007 Sequence Organization in Interaction. A Primer in Conversation Analysis. Volume 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Shantz, Carolyn Uhlinger, and Willard W. Hartup
1992 Conflict in Child and Adolescent Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Shaw, Sylvia
2000 “Language, Gender and Floor Appointment in Debates.” Discourse and Society 11(3):401–418. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
[ p. 56 ]
2002 Language and Gender in the House of Commons. Ph.D. Thesis, University of London.Google Scholar
2009 “The Difference Women Make: A Critique of the Notion of a ‘Women’s Style’ of Language in Political Contexts.” Proceedings of the BAAL Annual Conference. Newcastle: Newcastle University.Google Scholar
Sifianou, Maria
2008 “Parliamentary Discourse and Politeness.” In For Language. Festschrift for Professor George Babiniotis by the Department of Linguistics, edited by Amalia Mozer, Aikaterini Bakakou-Orfanou, Christoforos Charalambakis and Despina Chila-Markopoulou, 464–474. Athens: Ellinika Grammata. [in Greek]Google Scholar
Tsakona, Villy
2011 “Irony beyond Criticism: Evidence from Greek Parliamentary Discourse.” Pragmatics and Society 2(1):57–86. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2013 “Parliamentary Punning: Is the Opposition More Humorous than the Ruling Party?” European Journal of Humor Research 1(2):101–111. EJHR: www​.europeanjournalofhumor​.org
Tsakona, Villy, and Diana Popa
(eds) 2011 Studies in Political Humor. Amsterdam/ Philadlphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Watts, Richard J.
1992a Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
1992b “Linguistic Politeness and Politic Verbal Behavior: Reconsidering Claims for Universality.” In Politeness in Language: Studies in its History, Theory and Practice, edited by Richard J. Watts, Ide Sachiko and Konrad Ehlich, 43–70. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
2010 “Linguistic Politeness Theory and its Aftermath: Recent Research Trails.” In Interpersonal Pragmatics, edited by Miriam A. Locher, and Sage L. Graham, 43–70. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by other publications

Georgalidou, Marianthi, Katerina T. Frantzi & Giorgos Giakoumakis
2020. Aggression in media-sharing websites in the context of Greek political/parliamentary discourse in the years of the economic crisis. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict ► pp. 1 ff. Crossref logo
Nau, Charlotte & Craig O. Stewart
2018. Effects of gender and verbal aggression on perceptions of U.S. political speakers. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 6:1 ► pp. 127 ff. Crossref logo
Och, Malliga
2020. Manterrupting in the German Bundestag: Gendered Opposition to Female Members of Parliament?. Politics & Gender 16:2 ► pp. 388 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 august 2020. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.