TITLE:
Sexism in News: A Comparative Study on the Portray of Female and Male Politicians in The New York Times
AUTHORS:
Haoyun Dai, Xiaodong Xu
KEYWORDS:
Sexism, The New York Times, Speech Reporting, Markedness Theory
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Modern Linguistics,
Vol.4 No.5,
December
24,
2014
ABSTRACT: Adopting a comparative
and descriptive case study of The New York Times, this paper aims to probe
into the gender discrimination against female politicians in the news media. The New York Times, one of the most authoritative
newspapers in the world, can be a convincing representative to expose the universal
ideologies like sexism in the news media. The authors attempt to analyze the sexism
in news from two dimensions, namely, horizontal dimension (synchronic) and vertical
dimension (diachronic). Horizontally, the news reports concerning Barack Hussein
Obama and Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, two rivals of the Democratic Party in the
2008 American presidential election, are chosen. By analyzing the difference in
speech reporting, it can be seen that female politicians’ speeches are more controlled
and interfered. Vertically, based on Markedness Theory, we explore the development
and change in formal marking, distributional marking and semantic marking. It is
observable that in spite of the current subtle sexism hidden in news reports, news
media have made great efforts in preventing gender discrimination over the past
century and sexism against women in the current news reports appears to be less
direct and more subtle compared with the past.