Ideological Framing of Gender in The Guardian: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Trump’s Two-Gender Policy

Abstract

The paper is an investigation of the linguistic and discursive construction of the two-gender policy of Donald Trump in The Guardian with an emphasis on the ideological patterns within the domain of media representation. The study investigates the use of language options and discursive practices that are used to frame the policy and how these strategies influence the perception of gender, identity, and power by people. In particular, it answers two key questions: (1) what linguistic resources do The Guardian apply to create the two-gender policy of Trump, and (2) what discursive strategies and evaluative linguistic choices are involved in the production of ideological meaning. By utilizing a mixed-methodology, the research consists of the combination of a qualitative Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and quantitative corpus-based frequency analysis to give both micro- and macro-level understanding of media discourse. About 200 articles published in 2017-2020 by the Guardian were collected, processed, and analyzed with the help of AntConc. The Ideological Square developed by van Dijk (1998) is applicable to the qualitative analysis, allowing conducting systematic research on the in-group and out-group constructions, the polarization strategies, and the moral judgments. The lexical frequencies, keywords, collocations, evaluative adjectives, and repetitiveness of semantic patterns are analyzed quantitatively. Results indicate that The Guardian has continuously framed Trump two-gender policy as oppressive, backward, and discriminatory, as well as representing LGBTQ communities and rights activists as ethical, marginalized, and vulnerable. The nomination, predication, intensification, intertextuality, and metaphorical framing are recurrent discursive strategies that make the ideological position polarized and liberal. This research shows that media discourse contributes greatly to the social interpretation of gender policies and there is need to be critical of journalistic discourse. This study will contribute to media linguistics, gender representations studies and political discourse analysis by offering empirical evidence in the interplay of language, ideology and sociopolitical power.