Language and gender in Canadian Chief Medical Officers’ tweets during the Covid-19 pandemic

Bibliographic Data

ID12876958
AuthorsRachelle Vessey (0000-0002-2350-7758, Carleton University, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume20
Issue2
Pages200-217
Publication date2022-03-11
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCritical Discourse Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1740-5904 • E-ISSN: 1740-5912
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17405904.2022.2050772
OpenAlexW4220695583
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited22

Since January 2020, Canadian Chief Medical Officers (CMOs) have rapidly evolved into public figures. However, the gendered makeup of this role seems to map onto CMO communication: 10 CMOs are women and 7 use Twitter to communicate, as opposed to 7 men, of whom only 3 have Twitter accounts. Adopting the theoretical lens of language ideology, this paper explores language and gender dimensions of Canadian Chief Medical Officer (CMO) health discourse by analyzing pandemic tweets from CMOs (January 2020-June 2021, 21,389 tweets, 930,0883 words) using corpus-assisted discourse studies. Results suggest that male and female CMOs have not communicated to the same extent, nor have they used the same (range of) languages. Also, there are differences with regard to expressions of authority and compassion. While a paucity of male data poses methodological challenges, it also raises questions about the specific and disproportionate communication work accorded to and undertaken by women. The paper concludes by arguing that female CMOs’ adherence to stereotypically gendered ways of speaking is a strategy for navigating volatile online and offline environments, but that this raises questions about the longer-term impacts of authority in gendered discourse

Compassion · Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19 · Ideology · Officer · Pandemic · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Sociology · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Law · Medicine · Psychology

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