Presidential Discourse-in-interaction: How gender structures ironic and sarcastic references
Presidential Discourse-in-interaction: How gender structures ironic and sarcastic references

Summary/Abstract: This paper presents an analysis of several sequences of talk-in-interaction, highlighting the ironic and sarcastic references made by candidates to the US presidential elections in the debates of 2016 and 2020. The participation framework of the two events (one same male candidate–Donald Trump - in subsequent election debates, first with a female opponent – Hillary Clinton, then with a male – Joe Biden) offers an interesting perspective on how “the gender thing” is manifested in speech. Despite the almost gender-blind character reached by the genre of the pre-election debate as discourse-in-interaction, the analysis addresses the relevance of the speaker’s gender in significant moments of talk, particularly focusing on protagonists’ lexical choices to refer to the other in an ironic and sarcastic way. Trying to fill the is-ought to gap in the minds of the audience, candidates to presidency make sophisticated use of words in debates. In their permanented ort to disqualify the opponent while seducing the people, irony and sarcasm are effective weapons in the battles of words that these events are without exception turned into. The analysis considers the normative component of Political Discourse Analysis, as presented by Fairclough & Fairclough (2012, 2015), as well as the perspective on investigating verbal irony and sarcasm, as presented in Gibbs & Colston (2017) and the formulae for interpreting categories of humour, elaborated by Patrick Charaudeau (2011, 2013).

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