Gender representations in the Polish press: a feminist critical discourse study

Communication between politicians and the public is rarely direct and first-hand, but almost always mediated by journalist opinions and values. Consequently, the way in which the media reports on State matters has a profound impact on people’s understanding of political processes and their attitudes towards the governing figures. The aim of this research project is to investigate the role that the Polish Press assumes in mediating women’s involvement in contemporary politics. Stemming from the perspective of feminist critical linguistics, the thesis empirically examines a wide array of media publications derived from leading Polish socio-political magazines (‘Polityka’, ‘Wprost’, ‘Newsweek Polska’) and electronic press. By engaging with the journalist discourse, it focuses on the importance of language in generating epistemological claims about women and femininity. It demonstrates not only how female subjectivities are produced in the Polish public domain, but also how history and culture impinge on these constructions in a dialectical-relational manner. The intention is to draw up an ‘inventory’ of signifying practices through which female MPs emerge as gendered subjects in the hope that this will inspire closer scrutiny of media content, leading to its informed critique and transformation