How to Promote Feminist Political Agendas in Political Discourse: Strategies for Constructing a Discursive Space in Addressing Gender Crises

Abstract

his study employs the critical framework of Cognitive Linguistics' proximization theory, utilizing three official speeches from the President of the Spanish Government as a corpus. We conducted a thorough qualitative and quantitative analysis of President Pedro Sánchez's feminist discursive expressions using the Wordless corpus analysis software. The research examines, from three perspectives—spatial, temporal, and axiological—how Pedro Sánchez's feminist expressions construct crises and ideological confrontations through discursive strategies. The results reveal that, in terms of spatial trends, presidential speeches delineate conflicted relationships between two discursive camps. The discursive core includes Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish government, and feminism, while discursive elements at the margins encompass violence, machismo, privileges, and hate speech. On the spatial level, marginal elements highlight the threat they pose to the central discourse entity and ideology. Regarding temporal trends, contrasting the use of different discursive forms, such as changes in tense, reflects the persistence of marginal elements over time, from the past to the present and towards an indefinite future. In terms of evaluative inclinations, the comparison between the positive ideology of the central discourse and the negative ideology of marginal elements underscores ideological confrontation and demonstrates real-world conflicts resulting from this. Finally, anticipating foreseeable crises caused by ideological confrontation between the present and the future, advocacy is made for the legalization of gender equality policies.