Why a Woman Politician Can Be Very Unpopular in Russia: A Multimodal Factor

Abstract

New trends in gender inequality analysis focus on using corpus linguistics and multi-semiotics in order to find a common impact of different language resources in gender-based persuading of people. Our current project is devoted to revealing of gender inequality in women politician image. We started with a search of factors why a woman politician can be very unpopular in Russia. The Russians perceive woman politician's image as "highly hypocritical", in contrast to the more "natural" men images. At the same time, it would be impossible to portray women politicians' like men politicians', as in this case, women politicians' image can be perceived as "incredibly rude". Concerning this, it can be very difficult to create a positive image of women politicians even if Russian media will want it. We describe this problem based on images in photos of several women politicians (Hillary Clinton, Angela Merkel, Theresa May, Samanta Power, Jen Psaki). The Russian reader/viewer almost automatically has a low-level trust for their image and, in results, to their words. So we think that we should analyze words and photos together because they have influence together. This considered a multi-modal analysis as a timely and fruitful strategy of gender research.