“I’m not afraid.” Personal and public identity in the discourse of women political leaders in Italy

Abstract

The present study aims to explore the manner in which women political leaders construct their public and personal identity in and through the media, by identifying the topics discussed and the discursive strategies employed. The corpus is formed by 15 media interviews given and articles about two Italian women politicians, Emma Bonino, and Laura Boldrini. The framework applied is the discursive-historical approach (e.g. Reisigl and Wodak 2009). The results show that the women speakers attempt to construct their identity in a composite manner, uniting values such as firmness and courage with empathy and sensitivity to social issues. Such self-presentations aim to project the speakers as role models and to encourage social change.