Gender in Newspaper Discourse: Representation of Women and Men in Hard News

Mgr. Daniela Ripčíková

Master's thesis

Abstract:

The aim of this thesis was to produce a research on representation of women and men in quality British newspapers using a quantitative approach within the theory of feminist critical discourse analysis. The research is based on Caldas-Coulthard's study “Man in the news: the misrepresentation of women speaking in news-as-narrative-discourse” (1995 ). Four aspects of language relating to gender are analysed within this thesis: the representations of women and men who are quoted in different power and social positions, the numbers of women and men who are given voice in the newspapers, the speech verbs used with the female voice and the male voice and the differences in depictions of women and men in the newspapers. The thesis provides a comparison of the results with Caldas-Coulthard's findings to show how much the position of women compared to men reported in newspapers has changed and whether the distribution of power between women and men in newspapers is unequal.

Keywords

feminist critical discourse analysis, gender, newspaper, hard news, Caldas-Coulthard

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 26. 5. 2008

Thesis defence

• Date of defence: 10. 6. 2008
• Supervisor: doc. Mgr. Jan Chovanec, Ph.D.

Masaryk University

Faculty of Science

Master programme / field:
Mathematics / English Language and Literature