Does Politics Trump Gender? : A Study of Linguistic Features Among American Voters During the 2016 Presidential Election

Abstract: In this essay, the usage of several linguistic features of 13 members of a televised political discussion are studied. The members of the discussion were private citizens, and not political experts. This particular discussion was filmed during the 2016 American presidential election, just before the second national debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The studied linguistic features are: hedges, tag-questions, interaction and humor. By categorizing the members in three categories; age, gender and politics, this essay is able to investigate the results of the televised discussion by each category, and compare them to each other. The central question of the essay is if gender is a bigger divide regarding these linguistic features, than political views. The result shows that while gender still is the biggest divide regarding hedges, there are some specific elements where politics seems to trump gender.