Relational Authority and Gendered Style Shifting in Indonesian Women Leaders’ Public Communication

Meyke Jayanti Kinasih; Nurlaeli Hidayanti; Gharizi Matiini

doi:10.51673/jurnalistrendi.v11i4.3205

Meyke Jayanti Kinasih Institut Pemerintahan Dalam Negeri
Nurlaeli Hidayanti nstitut Pemerintahan Dalam Negeri
Gharizi Matiini Insitut Teknologi Indonesia

DOI: https://doi.org/10.51673/jurnalistrendi.v11i4.3205

Keywords: gendered discourse; women leaders; relational authority; style shifting; Indonesia

Abstract

Research on language and gender has often treated relationality and directness as contrasting styles, which can obscure how women leaders coordinate them within the same institutional encounter. This study examines three Indonesian women in executive office in comparable Metro TV interviews hosted by the same interviewer. The corpus comprises approximately 191 minutes of broadcast material. A theory-informed comparative qualitative discourse analysis treats gender associations as historical sensitizing meanings rather than properties of linguistic forms. A documented screening process reduced 477 timestamped blocks to 172 provisional segments, 74 contextually adequate candidate utterances, and 37 focal utterances for close analysis. The analysis separates observable linguistic evidence, sequential pragmatic inference, and institutional interpretation. Across the three cases, relational, mitigating, evidential, direct, and controlling resources are coordinated as calibrated expertise, bounded solidarity, and relational resolve. These are case configurations rather than domain effects or general traits of women leaders. The discussion proposes context-indexed gendered hybridity as a provisional analytic construct only when contrasting historically gender-indexed resources are sequentially linked to the same institutional task. The study contributes a transparent, context-sensitive account of gendered style shifting in Indonesian public leadership communication

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