Female Gender Representation in The Terminator Franchise

Abstract: The aim of this research is to investigate the representation of the female gender in theTerminator franchise and to examine whether there has been an evolution in thisrepresentation throughout the years. For this purpose, the representation of the lead femalecharacter, Sarah Connor, has been examined in the films The Terminator (Cameron, 1984),Terminator 2: Judgement Day (Cameron, 1991) and Terminator Genisys (Taylor, 2015), inwhich Sarah Connor is the only main female character. The thesis begins by providing athorough presentation of the situational, specific and the theoretical background of the threefilms analysed. Then, the methodology used in the research is described and linguistic, visualand contextual data are provided. These data are then analysed and discussed in relation tothe background of the films and to the objectives set at the beginning of the research. Inparticular, the linguistic aspect of gender representation is explored based on the waylanguage is used to represent women in the Terminator films. After a thorough analysis ofdata collected and discussed, the research concluded that there has, indeed, been an evolutionin female gender representation in the Terminator films, which reflects an evolution in theperception of gender by society itself.