Gender Representation in News Headlines: A Computational Corpus Analysis

Abstract

In this research, the linguistic construction of gender representation in newspaper headlines in English is explored using an integrated approach of feminist and computational corpus methodology. Utilising the feminist linguistic theory and the critical discourse analysis, the study focuses on revealing the role of the less apparent lexico-grammatical decisions made in the headlines to either reinforce or challenge the gendered identity. Corpus analysis software was applied to a self-compiled collection of newspaper headlines in order to determine frequency distributions, keyword distributions, and collocational patterns related to gender-related words. The results show that there are systematic asymmetries in terms of representation, as female actors tend to be linked with victimization, domesticity, and relational categories of themes, whereas the male actors are mostly situated in the areas of authority, politics, and economic power. The results of collocational analysis also reveal the presence of repetitive semantic frames, which foreground or background agency based on gender, indicating that headline construction is a strong ideological process. Through quantitative methodologies of computation and qualitative methods of critical interpretation, the research offers empirical information about the ongoing gender biasness in the headline level. The study adds to the increasing literature in corpus-aided studies of discourse by anticipating headlines as a genre with unique and powerful media practices, as well as applying the computational linguistic research to the Pakistani media domain. The results highlight the fact that the study of headline discourse is a very crucial area where language, ideology, and social power can be involved in constructing the way people think.