A Gendered Influence in Campaign Debates? Analysis of Mixed-gender United States Senate and Gubernatorial Debates

Throughout the literature a great deal of of the research on political campaign debates has focused upon presidential debates and has largely ignored non-presidential debates, particularly those featuring candidates competing in mixed-gender races. The view of this study is to draw attention to these non-presidential debates and particularly those in which sex may play a pivotal part Through our analysis of four debates-two gubernatorial and sum of two units U.S. Senate debates-we advance the notion of debatestyle as a useful analytic scheme to examine the verbal satisfied of female and male candidate debate dialogue. While not many differences in female and male debatestyles ultimately emerg issues of the current study indicate that female and male political candidates, when engaged in debate, adopt a strategy of sexed adaptiveness that offers important contributions to the two research on political debates as well as research upon gender and politics.

Keywords: Campaign Debates; Debatestyle; sex and Politics

Studies of campaign debates have become a valuable area of political communication research, providing greater understanding of candidate rhetorical strategies as well as events from debate viewing. This research, however, has focused almost exclusively upon presidential debates, ignoring the many campaign debates that meet the eye regularly in political races at local, state, and national horizontals (McKinney & Carlin, 2004). Examination of non-presidential debates provides scholars an opportunity to hunt research questions not easily studied in the adjoining matter of a presidential campaign. For example, below the presidential horizontal female candidates are seeking-and being pitch uponed to-public office in greater numbers; and, these candidates engage many times in campaign debates, most frequently with a male opponent. Beyond the hardly any studies of the 1984 George H W Bush and Geraldine Ferraro vice-presidential debate (eg Hardy-Short, 1986; Rosenberg & Elliot, 1987; Shields & MacDowell, 1987; Sullivan, 1989; Trent 1994) almost no campaign debate research exists that incorporates candidate sex as a central variable of analysis.

The generally received study seeks to remedy the lack of attention paid to campaign debates at the non-presidential horizontal and, particularly, the lack of attention paid to debates between candidates running in mixed-gender races. Following a brief review of the relevant sex communication literature, and discussion of pertinent findings drawn from political advertising research, we advance the notion of debatestyle as a useful analytic scheme to examine the verbal easy in mind of female and male candidate debate dialogue. Finally, we analyze the debatestyles of female and male candidates in single outed U.S. Senate and gubernatorial debates, finding that candidates engaged in mixed-gender debates exhibit a pattern of sexed adaptiveness in their debate dialogue.

Literature Review

Gender Communication

The proposal to inquiry specifically female and male communication in mixed-gender campaign debates inherently refer tos an assumption that differences may exist in in what way the candidates present themselves in similar a setting. That differences may exist in the verbal easy in mind of female and male debate dialogue is not in and of itself similar a novel idea, based upon a review of the available sex communication research. Considerable study has been devot to the issue of sex differences in communication, seeking to find validity for prevailing sex stereotypes. Women's verbal communication, also referr to as "feminine language" (Bate & Bowker 1997) is considered a way in which relationships can be established and maintained (Bate & Bowker 1997; Tannen, 1990; timber-land 1994), promoting such feelings of understanding, equality, support, closenes and inclusivity. Women's phraseology is also personal, consisting of "details, personal disclosures, anecdotes, and thicken reasoning" (Wood, 1994, p. 142) and incorporates the use of hedges, tag questions, and adjective and adverb qualifiers (Bate & Bowker 1997; forest-land 1994).

Men's verbal communication is considered a tool for establishing mastery and status (Tannen, 1990; forest-land 1994), including more assertions than questions and a focus upon goals/tasks (Bate & Bowker, 1997; forest 1994). Men may interrupt to establish dominance, speak more abstractly, indicate little sympathy (Wood 1994) and use non-standard articulate utterance for emphasis (Bate & Bowker 1997) on the other hand will rarely use qualifiers (Bate & Bowker 1997; forest-land 1994).

Campbell (1989) has advanced a protoplast of rhetoric grounded in women's lived experiences. unfolded through analysis of the rhetorical strategies engrossed by nineteenth-century female American rhetors, Campbell described the "feminine style" as rhetoric "that displays a personal tone, uses personal experiences, anecdotes and examples as evidence, exhibits inductive manner of making emphasizes audience participation, and encourages identification between speaker and audience" (p 13) Blankenship and Robson (1995) examining various speeches and utterances of a number of contemporary female political leaders, also described a feminine manner of writing in political discourse very similar to Campbell's pattern Dow and Tonn (1993) applied Campbell's type of feminine style to the rhetoric of Ann Richards, finding that the Texas Governor's speeches were characterized largely by means of "use of narrative, concrete examples, analogies, and anecdotes as primary evidence sources; personal tone and encouragement of audience participation with an alternative political philosophy reflecting feminine ideals of care, nurturance, and family relationship" (p 289) Importantly, Campbell points without that although the feminine mode of expression emerged from the rhetoric and experiences of women "it was not and is not today a manner of writing exclusive to women, either as speakers or as audiences" (p 12) The ability for males, as well as females, to adopt a feminine mode of expression is developed more fully by dint of Jamieson (1995) who argues that the narrative form of mediated messages may actually allow males to busy the feminine style more successfully