Text trajectories and media discourse

Abstract

During the Democratic nomination for President of the United States (2007-2008), Hillary Rodham Clinton’s laughter became the subject of intense scrutiny by mass media and was dubbed, The Clinton Cackle. This paper investigates how the ‘cackle’ characterization was first established, and thus, formed the basis of an intertextual series (Hodges, 2011), wherein this re-presentation of Clinton’s laughter circulated across multiple discursive contexts. By examining various dimensions of the decontextualization and recontextualization of Clinton’s laughter as it ‘travelled’ across contexts (Blommaert, 2005), the analysis illustrates how the news media effectively reshaped the kinds of meanings and values attached to it and concomitantly (re)produced and reinforced a stereotypically gendered, negative (i.e., sexist, misogynist) perception of her. The paper concludes with a discussion of the significance of tracing the trajectory of this ‘text’ in terms of the ideological nature of the intertextual processes at work, and the implications for women politicians more generally.

Talking About Sexism

“…Figure 1 reports when these 24 interviews were broadcast, spanning a 12-month period—beginning in early July 2007 up until Clinton’s resignation in early June 2008. As these interactions were analyzed, specific themes and patterns emerged that generally corresponded to what I have divided into two distinct periods of coverage: “early coverage,” which includes those discussions that took place between July and December 2007, when Clinton was characterized by mainstream media as “winning,” and “later coverage,” which includes those occurring between January and June 2008, when then-Senator Barack Obama took the lead and Clinton was consistently reported as “losing.” In other recent work (Romaniuk, 2014), I outline some of the differences in journalists’ accounts of a sexist re-presentation of Clinton in terms of these two periods of coverage in print news media. Here I highlight key features of the IRs’ treatment of interviewees’ (IEs) claims that are characteristic of each period.…”

Identifying and Responding to Possible-ismsin Institutional Encounters

“…The article is located in a wider context of discourse-based studies of talk about “others” and the practices of prejudicial categorisations. Much of this work uses one of two kinds of data: “public” discourse such as television and radio call-in shows, political speeches and interviews, and newspaper texts, in which the topic under discussion is racism, sexism, or other -isms (e.g., Romaniuk, 2014; Van Dijk, 1991; Whitehead, 2009) or interview accounts (Van den Berg, Wetherell, & Houtkoop-Steenstra, 2003; see also Dixon & Durrheim, 2003; Van Dijk, 1987; Wetherell & Potter, 1992). What this research leaves out is a focus on talk in “private” institutional and domestic settings, in which -isms creep into other interactional activities.…”

Doing ‘being interrupted’ in political talk

“…Ehrlich 2002, 2007; Romaniuk & Ehrlich 2017), and numerous studies have found that female politicians are sanctioned for linguistic behaviors that their male counterparts display without penalty. Such behaviors include ‘illegal turns’ (Shaw 2016), attempts to (re)claim the floor (Cameron & Shaw 2016), and even laughter (Romaniuk 2014, 2016).…”