Facework display of a political leader: Linguo-rhetoric approach (the case study of Julia Gillard’s speech on misogyny)

This article focuses on the cognitive rhetoric features of the politician’s facework that incorporate face threatening acts, communicative strategies, and discursive functions in a political speech. The data were taken from the speech on misogyny delivered in 2012 by the 27th Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Throughout the article we disclose the interaction of the politician’s face, politeness, and power in the institutional discourse. Julia Gillard does her facework actively engaged into the misogyny argument which provides a persuasive ground to confront the opponent’s face through reinforced employment of both positive and negative face threatening acts. The findings suggest that doing facework through rhetorical practices Gillard signals her identity in three faces: a political leader, a female politician and her individual social self-image of a woman and daughter. Gillard’s face claims are closely bound with her sense of sociality rights and obligations. This entails her relational and collective self-construal prevail over her individual face. The symbolic power obliges Gillard to protect her collective self-credibility and makes the ground for undermining the self-worth of the opponent in a rather straightforward manner. The politeness Gillard exercises is mainly prescribed by the institutional goal and status which directly impact the use of the linguistic means employed by the politician.