Language, gender and power: Lexicalisation of women in the national assembly and other top political posts in Kenya (2013-2017)

This paper examines, from a linguistic perspective, the lexicalisation of the Kenya National Assembly women politicians and women in other top political posts by newspaper opinion articles. Every instance of language is a reflection of the prevailing discursive and ideological systems in the society in which it is used. The use of language, and specifically, the lexical items, may therefore explain the power and gender inequalities in Kenyan’s National Assembly. The number of elected women in the National Assembly of Kenya falls short of the 30 percent 2010 requirement spelled in the 2010 Kenya Constitution. The objective of this paper is to describe how the lexical items used in newspaper opinion articles construct National Assembly women politicians and women in other top political posts in Kenya from 2013 to 2017. The paper uses Fairclough’s (2001) social-cultural and Van Dijk’s (2001) social-cognitive approaches to Critical Discourse Analysis. Being a qualitative research, data was collected through document reviews. The findings reveal that newspaper opinion articles utilize ideologically managed lexical items that construct women in the discourses of gender. The study concludes that the ideological management of language by the newspaper opinion articles is likely to curtail the political ambitions of women politicians in Kenya