Álvaro Vega I Córdoba, Mar 4 (EFE) of woman and Andalusian.
The work of María Lucía Carrillo Expósito (Middelburg, Netherlands -1973-), PhD in Eurolanguages and Specialized Terminology from the University of Córdoba and Università degli Studi di Nápoles, has been published in the journal ‘Annali’ of this Italian academic institution, within a thematic issue dedicated to ‘Female discourse and its representation’.
The article is based on the analysis of the publications of four Spanish digital headers during 2017, coinciding with the internal electoral process of the PSOE, with a study period between May 16 and June 21, when the primary elections were held and then the 39th Federal Congress of the PSOE, which took place between June 16 and 18 of that year.
The digital newspapers chosen, ‘El Confidencial’, ‘El Español’, ‘El diario.es’ and ‘Okdiario’, then led the list drawn up by ComScore and, “in addition, they belong to opposite political orientations”, according to the author.
Killer or the equivalent of assassin
Lucía Carrillo affirms in her work that “the newspapers had already begun, before our analysis, to configure a certain image for the politician Susana Díaz”, since “in the newspaper ‘El Confidencial’ there appears a reference where politics laments such a vision: ‘The president of the Board complains that they have made her a suit that does not correspond to reality’ (Susana Díaz lost the last train, 5/21/2017)”.
In his opinion, “a significant demonstration of the thesis that we maintain on the discursive construction of a precise image for politics from the newspapers is found in the use of the name killer”, which conveys the connotation of “a cold person, without scruples, whose performance is exclusively aimed at achieving specific objectives regardless of the methods used” and which continues to be “the use of foreign words that cushions the harsh impact that using the equivalent word in the Spanish linguistic system would mean in the media : murderer”.
“The second feature that appears repeatedly in the media to define Susana Díaz is her haughty, arrogant character, frequently declared in the texts as arrogance,” says the work, which is based on the author’s thesis, where she analyzed 615 texts journalistic, 526 from Spanish media and 89 Italian, to address ‘The (im)politeness in the discursive representation of the image of political women in the Spanish and Italian digital written media’, and for which she received an outstanding rating cum laude.
Allusions to the body and sexual aspects
Now, the article “aims to identify and examine the discursive strategies and linguistic resources present in written journalistic texts in order to build a concrete image of politics, an image arranged and suitable for attacking the role image with the aim of objective of discrediting the candidate”.
From her analysis, she concludes that “one perceives in certain newspapers an image of Susana Díaz that does not precisely match the stereotyped and role-playing image reserved and tolerated for women”, while “one begins to glimpse a hostile sexism towards the figure of the policy achieved through a series of linguistic resources with the aim of highlighting attitudes and representations such as the dehumanization, animalization or sexualization of the female body, infantilism, ignorance and poor preparation for the position to which Susana Díaz aspires”, then president of the Junta de Andalucía and pre-candidate for the general secretariat of the PSOE.
Carrillo points out that “there is no lack of allusions to the female body linked to sexual aspects, implicit or explicit, in the corpus, in order to apply a hostile sexism towards the political figure”, and cites a headline from ‘OKdiario’ from 17 May 2017: “The ‘pedrista’ Óscar Puente accuses Susana of ‘being with her ass in the air to the right’”.
Andalusian stereotypes
In his opinion, also “another recurring way to build an image conducive to putting hostile sexism into practice and attacking politician Susana Díaz in the texts is through the hint of illiteracy and ignorance.”
Thus, he emphasizes, “we remember that Susana Díaz is Andalusian, Sevillian to be more precise, a condition in which she reaffirms herself on other occasions, projecting an image that is installed in the self-stereotype.”
The author, who grew up in the province of Córdoba, recalls that “Andalusia, as a region, carries the general negative image of a lazy, illiterate and ignorant people”, an image to which “the gender stereotype is added, that is, in the uselessness of the educated woman, whether due to incapacity, ignorance or unnecessary in relation to the functions circumscribed to the assigned role: housewife, wife and mother, caretaker, etc.” EFE