Masculinity, Terrorism, and Partisan Identity in Post-September 11 Politics.

Political communication scholarship readily acknowledges that masculinity is a form of political capital in American politics, but has not made clear how this concept becomes manifest in the strategic language used by politicians, particularly since September 11th. In this study we content analyzed the speeches from the 2004 political conventions of the Republican and Democratic parties in order to see if gendered discourse was present and, if present, how it was strategically employed. Findings indicate that masculinity was used in the discourse of both political parties in order to shape party identity, and that a two-pronged strategy, which we describe as hyper-masculine, was used by the Republican Party to bolster party identity and discursively emasculate opponents. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]