Abstract
The article discusses the long-standing history of silencing and belittling women’s voices and public speech through discriminatory discourses. Using assumptions and methodological procedures of the French Discourse Analysis, we examine utterances from ancient Greece and Rome, from modern Europe and contemporary Brazil, coming from different fields of knowledge and formulated in different discursive genres, which materialize a set of ideas, beliefs, and representations about the supposed female incapacities for public performance in public space. Regarding contemporary times, we analyze utterances that focus on female voice and public speech in the political scenario, more precisely, utterances that concern former president Dilma Rousseff and federal deputy Tabata Amaral. We demonstrate that, despite the profound historical changes in the conditions of discourse production, the discrimination of female speech has become so consistent that it continues to perpetuate itself today.
Keywords:
Political discourse; Public speech; Women’s speech