More on the Misogyny Speech

This transcript is an excerpt from Former PM Julia Gillards 2013 monologue “opposing the motion”. Whilst the speech took place within the House of Representatives, various videos of the event soon went viral, thus expanding the speech's original intended audience. In drawing public attention the sexist behaviours of Tony Abbott, Gillard both diverted attention from the controversial issue involving the publication of Peter Slipper's derogatory text messages and successfully successfully awareness of the issue of misogyny is Australian politics.

The parliamentary context in which the discourse took place necessitates not only a formal register but also an adherence to the linguistic paradigm underpinning the official environment. This must be taking into consideration by the speaker in order to maintain a respectful identity. Gillard's use of formal modes of address and pronouns “Deputy Speaker” “Leader of the Opposition” “member for Mackellar” “The Government”, employment of euphemistic implicature “he needs a mirror”, political jargon“I rise to oppose the motion” and formal syntactic structures such as the passive voice “will not be lectured” are indicative of her awareness of the appropriate conventions of the context.

As the discourse is a monologue, Gillard holds the floor for the its entirety. Her authority is both enforced and undermined by interjections from the audience which signal support “hear hear” “absoloutely” and restlessness “order order”. The notion that the audience is in favour of Gillard during the extended periods of silence (which comprise the majority of their role in the discourse) is more ambiguous. Whilst Gillard intends to manipulate her audience into silence through building suspense in lines 42 to 55, their response could be due their obligation to be respectful of the official context and role of Gillard as Prime Minister. 

Gillard allocates stress and a louder pitch to certain words within utterances in order to render them more emphatic and emotive (lines 9 to 15). Contrastingly, Gillard employs a softer intonation in line 32 “thats what he needs to do” so as to permit the message to resonate with the audience. Similarly, the falling intonation allocated to certain utterances functions to generate a notion of emphatic finality. (line 21, 24 and 31). In conjunction with prosodic features, Gillard employs a repetition of lexemes such as “sexism” and “misogyny” and syntactic parallelism “not now, not ever” which work to further emphasise her argument.

The positive and negative face needs of Abbott are ignored by Gillard. Her accusatory statements which label him a sexist and misogynist cater neither for his desire to not be imposed upon by others or for his need to feel acknowledged and appreciated. The collective pronoun “The Government” further contributes this effect in presenting a cohesive, united front against Abbott which has significantly more effect than the use first person pronouns “I” and “my”.

In comparison, Gillard acknowledges the positive face needs of women (their desire to be seen and treated as equals to men) facing sexism in Australia by condemning misogynistic behaviour. This also caters for their need to not be imposed upon by the sexist agenda of Abbott.