Ethos Building in the Discourse of Women Politicians in Tanzania

Abstract

This paper examines women politicians’ discourse as they address the University of Dar es Salaam community on the topic ‘the woman politician in struggles for gender equality in Africa.’ The paper aims to determine whether or not women through their speeches managed to enhance their ethos as agentive enough for their audience to take them seriously as mentors in the fight for gender equality. The data were collected from the audio recording done by the press, and Systemic Functional Linguistics guided the analysis. The findings showed four of five women politicians making more efforts to enhance ethos through engagement in different process types, investing more in the actor role. The study notes, however, the underperformance of the material and behavioral processes, which could have aided in ethos’ enhancement. The study suggests that politicians engage more with the material and behavioral process types, maximizing their participant role in the actor and minimizing their participant role as goal.

Keywords: Agency, ethos, feminist political theory, systemic functional linguistics, Tanzania

DOI: 10.56279/jlle.v19i2.7