A STUDY OF POWER AND GENDER IN JULIA GILLARD’S MISOGYNY SPEECH: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Abstract

Misogyny Speech is a famous speech carried by Julia Gillard, the first female Australian Prime Minister, on 22 October 2012 in Parliament against the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott. The speech is delivered to accuse Abbott as sexist and misogynist. Moreover, the emphasis on addressing Abbott and his direct quotations are often used by Gillard in her speech. The objective of this study is to examine language used by Gillard. It is conducted to disclose power assertion, gender manifestation, and women underrepresentation in it. The investigation is based on Halliday‟s Systemic Functional Linguistics focusing on processes in transitivity system. Further, the theory of Critical Discourse Analysis along with theory of language and power and gender are applied to uncover the goal through the dominant processes. The nature of this study is a mixed approach which includes qualitative data, statistical analysis, and non-experimental design. It is applied on a quantitative and qualitative research as the type of research in this study. The qualitative data are clauses obtained from the transcript of Misogyny Speech through The Sydney Morning Herald and analyzed through the transitivity system to know the type of processes. In the statistical method, data will be calculated to find the dominant type of process used by Gillard in the speech. Later, this will be discussed by using supporting theories. As the result, Gillard‟s weak power and her femininity manifested in the speech are disclosed. It is concerned with the dominant process that is material process. In addition, through this, the existence of women underrepresentation in Australia can be disclosed by the three-dimensional analysis of Fairclough.