Gender, Power and Language: A Corpus-Based Study of Women’s Representation in Parliamentary Debates

This dissertation investigates the relationship between language and women’s oppression, with particular attention to how linguistic structures and usage both reflect and perpetuate gender inequality. The first chapter provides a historical and theoretical overview of the origins of women’s oppression in language, examining how grammatical conventions were largely shaped by male perspectives and identifying the linguistic features that contribute to gender bias. The second chapter reviews key scholarly contributions to the field, while also addressing the role of corpora in linguistic research, outlining their methodological advantages and limitations. Additionally, it discusses potential strategies for addressing linguistic inequality and promoting more inclusive language practices. The third and central chapter presents a corpus-based analysis of political discourse, focusing on the collocation of the gendered terms woman/women, lady/ladies and feminism/feminist within the Hansard Corpus. Through a comparative examination of usage patterns in the first two decades of the twentieth century and in 1960 to 1970, the study aims to reveal shifts in the representation of gendered terms in political contexts and parliamentary discourses, thereby contributing to broader discussions on the intersection of language, power, and gender.