Faminine and masculine features in campaign speeches of 2024 US presidential candidates: pragmatic analysis

The article focuses on the analyses of campaign speeches delivered during 2024 presidential campaign by the candidates for the US presidency – Donald Trump, Joseph Biden, Nikki Haley, and Kamala Harris – in the light of gender theory. For the in-depth research of the discourse in question, the authors clarify the concept of gender through the lens of the fundamental works by foreign and Ukrainian scholars within the realm of gender linguistics and identify the criteria for the analyses of the selected texts. These criteria include stereotypical features of male and female speech styles and the means of their verbalization. The research findings reveal the continuous tendency in contemporary American political discourse to erase strict requirements to differentiate male and female speech behaviour. In particular, the speeches of the male candidates are characterised by a high degree of emotionality, hypertrophied assessments embodied in the significant array of emotionally coloured lexis and diverse range of stylistic figures, which are the signs traditionally associated with a feminine style of speech communication. Notably, in the speeches of the female candidates, alongside the feminine speech properties, we observe the wide use of harsh communicative strategies expressing aggression implemented in threats and insults, which is a recognised manifestation of masculine behaviour. At the same time, there is no complete levelling between male and female speech. The male speakers continue to dominate the women in terms of volume and duration of their speeches, support their theses with specific facts and figures, and for the purpose of discrediting their opponents, the male speakers resort to the use of low flown vocabulary with the strong negative connotations. The female orators, in contrast, traditionally make excessive efforts to create empathy on the part of voters, give preference to flexible communicative strategies, and avoid or minimise the use of the vocabulary of the reduced stylistic register.