Sylvia Shaw from Middlesex University presents her paper (Cameron and Shaw 2016) that undertook a linguistic analysis of the leaders’ performances in televised election debates

In the UK General Election of 2015 three female politicians: the Green Party Leader, Natalie Bennett, the Scottish National Party leader, Nicola Sturgeon, and the Plaid Cymru leader, Leanne Wood featured more prominently in the campaign than any group of women has featured in previous UK General Elections.

This paper presents data from larger study (Cameron and Shaw 2016) that undertook a linguistic analysis of the leaders’ high-profile performances in two televised election debates to assess the extent to which they speak in the ‘different voice’ of consensus and cooperation that has been claimed to be typical of women in politics. Our findings indicate that party status rather than gender determined the leaders’ occupation of the debate floor and that this, together with a high degree of variability in communicative styles between men and between women indicates that the leaders’ performances represent a more complex and individual pattern of participation than the women’s ‘different voice’ ideology would suggest.