Keywords

Masculinity; Critical Discourse Analysis; Russia; Turkey; United Kingdom; France

Abstract

This project examines how European leaders of autocratic and democratic nations engage with masculinity discourses in their public speeches. Do authoritarian leaders use masculinity in a different way than democratic leaders? I answer this question by completing a critical discourse analysis of speeches from Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Boris Johnson, and Emmanuel Macron, the leaders of Russia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and France, respectively. The speeches were publicized from July 2019 to September 2022, when all four leaders were simultaneously in office. I found that a similar rhetorical strategy focusing on dominance and strength was used across regime types and that empire is still a central component of their approach. These findings support the ideas that gendered language is used in discussions of international affairs and that the current form of hegemonic masculinity currently maintains its dominance in these rhetorical spaces. While all of the leaders have their own styles of portraying masculinity, they all engage in discourses that strongly reaffirm the dominant gender order. These findings suggest that these nations strive to sustain and extend their positions of global geopolitical dominance and that masculine strategies are essential to these processes.

Thesis Completion Year

2024

Thesis Completion Semester

Spring

Thesis Chair

Armato, Michael

College

College of Sciences

Department

Department of Sociology

Thesis Discipline

Sociology

Language

English

Access Status

Open Access

Length of Campus Access

None

Campus Location

Orlando (Main) Campus

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Rights Statement

In Copyright