REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN PHILIPPINE PRESIDENT RODRIGO ROA DUTERTE'S 2016 - 2019 SPEECHES: A CORPUS-BASED CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

In the last ten years, the world has seen an increase of political leaders using sexist and misogynistic language in their public speeches or social media platforms. In the case of the Philippines, President Rodrigo Roa Duterte has been accused of being sexist and using misogynistic language. Women have been referred to as the cause of rape, ‘should be shot in their vaginas’, called ‘incompetent’, ‘ignorant’, and ‘dumb’ and more. Is he indeed, sexist? This thesis project combines corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis to examine the collocational profile of the female gender-related words babae [woman], nanay [mother], mother, women, and wife and male gender-related words father, tatay [father], son, men, and lalaki [man] in President Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s June 2016 to December 2019 speeches. Using WordSmith Tools 8.0 (Scott, 2020) to carry out collocation and concordance analyses and guided by van Leeuwen’s representation of social actors (van Leeuwen, 1996) and Mill’s (2008) definition of sexism, this study shows that female-gender related terms are frequently collocated with words that reflect the following beliefs: women are weak who need protection; have less powerful roles and functions; victims of crime and violence; and are evaluated based on physical characteristics. Male-gender related terms are collocated with words that reflect the following beliefs: men are primary protectors of the family and the public in general; possessors of power; often the perpetrators of crime and violence; and evaluated based on their non-physical characteristics. This study argues that gender representation in President Duterte’s speeches from 2016 – 2019 is oppressive to women and must be exposed and challenged