OUR SAVIOUR WILL NOT BE A WOMAN: USERS’ POLITICAL COMMENTS ON YOUTUBE TALK SHOW OFFICIAL CHANNEL

ABSTRACT

This article aims at studying the representation of four candidates (two male and two female) in the last Brazilian Presidential elections in a corpus of comments posted online. The comments were posted as part of the reception of a series of interviews aired and broadcasted through official YouTube Channel by a top-rated talk show in a Brazilian Public Television. The theoretical framework lays on Systemic-Functional Grammar. Online Data scraping software collected data anonymously. All comments were processed using software for corpora management, and quantitative results were plotted using Gephi. The results show that male candidates tend to be judged by their political options and social-political origin. They represent political saviours or possible political menaces. Likewise, women are judged for their political and ideological affiliations. However, their physical appearance is continuously evaluated as they are subjected to sexist and sexualised comments.

systemic-functional linguistics; women; appraisal; transitivity; lexis