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Our starting point is that there are gender differences in the use of language linked to masculine/feminine role identity, and not to alleged essentialist, intrinsic features. The research is a contribution to the understanding of links between linguistic behaviors and socio-psychological processes, as these relate to agency and ingroup/outgroup differentiation and to gender roles. We conducted our descriptive study on 441 parliamentary speeches delivered between 1976 and 2009 by four Italian politicians, differentiated by gender and political affiliation. We expected a higher degree of agency as well as higher ingroup/outgroup differentiation for male than for female politicians with a trend towards a lesser degree of gender differences in the later period (1994-2009) because of the feminine emancipatory processes in the Italian society and parliament. The indicators of high/low agency were: pronouns and verbs in the first person singular/plural, and conditional modal verbs. For the ingroup/outgroup differentiation, we used pronouns in the first and second person plural. We conducted a quantitative textual analysis and a qualitative contextual analysis. Our results confirm the hypothesis in part. We advanced some contextualist considerations to interpret the outcomes.

Relation between gender and language has been studied by many authors, however, there is still some uncertainty left regarding gender influence on language usage in the professional environment. Often, the studied data sets are too small or texts of individual authors are too short in order to capture differences of language usage wrt gender successfully. This study draws from a larger corpus of speeches transcripts of the Lithuanian Parliament (1990–2013) to explore language differences of political debates by gender via stylometric analysis. Experimental set up consists of stylistic features that indicate lexical style and do not require external linguistic tools, namely the most frequent words, in combination with unsupervised machine learning algorithms. Results show that gender differences in the language use remain in professional environment not only in usage of function words, preferred linguistic constructions, but in the presented topics as well ; Baltijos pažangių technologijų institutas, Vilnius ; Baltijos pažangiųjų technologijų institutas ; Taikomosios informatikos katedra ; Vilniaus universitetas ; Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas

AbstractAre nonverbal reactions during parliamentary debate gendered? Do male and female members of parliament (MPs) experience applause or jeering differently? In short, yes, and the gendered nature of a speech matters. Using an original corpus of over 544,000 speeches given in German state parliaments, we first estimate the gendered nature of parliamentary speeches and then examine how reactions to speeches given by male and female MPs differ. Female and male MPs receive similarly positive and negative reactions to their speeches on average, but they receive different reactions depending on the gendered nature of the speeches. Speeches using language associated with women's topics receive fewer reactions overall and even fewer when delivered by men. The gendered nature of parliamentary interjections could affect how women MPs view their position and how women voters view parliament.

The aim of this paper was to study gender differences in topic choice selection using the corpus of speeches given in the 113th United States Congress. We also looked at whether there are topic choice selection differences with respect to party affiliation and chamber, and finally, whether conversational topics chosen by male and female politicians correlate with any other category we measured in our corpus. The corpus was composed of 672 speeches by the female and 2,983 speeches by the male politicians. The speech transcripts were downloaded from the official repository Thomas and analyzed using the text analysis software Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) to identify the use of vocabulary related to seven conversational topics recorded by LIWC. The data was analyzed both quantitatively, using statistical analysis, and qualitatively, to determine if there are significant gender differences in speech topic selection. The analyses showed that there are overall gender and affiliation differences in topic selection by the male and female politicians in the 113th Congress, some confirming the trend of long-standing prevalence of home-related references in women's speeches, and death and religion references in men's speeches, others marking a social shift for some of the categories compared to previous studies on the topic, such as the increasing share of references to work, money achievement in women's speeches, as well as women's preference for security, and men's preference for competitiveness, as signaled by their lexical choices. Further correlation test results recorded subtler differences which pointed to linguistic changes in stereotypization, such as women signaling less emotion and choosing more formal ways of expression.

The topic of this work is the regulation of parliamentary debate by parliamentary rules of procedure in order to ensure its smooth flow and quality, and to prevent abuse of freedom of speech. Parliamentary debate is the "blood stream" of parliamentary work and decision-making. In the parliamentary debate, with freedom of speech ensured, parliamentarians oppose political positions, ideas and arguments in their speeches. For the sake of efficient parliamentary work and decision-making, the debate should be regulated legally, which is done by the parliamentary rules of procedure, the "parliamentary constitution" adopted by the parliament and which prescribes the internal organization and procedures of the parliament. The goal of regulating the debate with the rules of procedure is to ensure uninterrupted parliamentary work and decision-making, but also to protect freedom of speech and the rights of the minority in parliament. In order to realize this, parliamentary rules of procedure must be clear, precise and fair. It must not be a mere declarative act, but an expression of the political understanding of opposing political options and their common aspiration for a constructive approach to solving issues of general interest. The parliamentary rules of procedure can only be fair if the political culture of parliamentary officials, a healthy parliamentary tradition and bona fide parliamentary customs are woven into it.

We study political polarization in a parliamentary setting dominated by strong parties. In addition to examining polarization along the left-right dimension, we consider political divergence between legislators belonging to the same political bloc. Are politicians' background characteristics unimportant when parties have powerful tools to discipline their rank-and-file? We investigate this question using legislative speech from the Norwegian Parliament and recently developed techniques for measuring group differences in high-dimensional choices. Across the background characteristics we consider — gender, age, urbanicity, and class background — we document substantial differences in speech, even when comparing legislators from the same party bloc and policy committee. Our results illuminate how individual legislators shape policymaking in party-centered environments.

This article responds to recent cases of parliamentary speech which reflect the ascendancy of a totalising 'mainstream' approach to public discourse and a political leadership that may, at times, be overly attentive to the majority-rule dimension of democracy. These developments spark a more general discussion of the phenomenology of privileged parliamentary speech, the role of speech freedoms in liberal democratic orders and the duties of parliamentary representatives within them. I make two general conclusions. First, the ways in which we normally argue and think about free speech will not generally apply to the speech of parliamentarians because their speech rights cannot be universalised. Secondly, even if parliamentary speech could be treated as standard speech there would be no legitimate defence (from a liberal democratic point of view) for a strictly populist approach to its use since this could undermine the deliberative function of parliament and lead to the violation of other important liberal democratic principles.

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An alternative framework to US sex-discrimination law proposes that gender issues be analyzed according to gender disadvantage rather than gender difference. Using examples from court rulings on occupational restrictions, protective labor, & maternity policy, it is suggested that a focus on context & consequence of gender discrimination will reorient issues of gender away from difference toward methods of changing the workplace. 66 References. L. Baker