The discursive construction of gender and agency in the linguistic landscape of Ireland’s 2018 abortion referendum campaign

Abstract

In a 2018 referendum, the Irish electorate voted in favour of repealing Ireland's quasi-total legal ban on abortion. The referendum campaign saw important public discussions regarding gender roles in twenty-first century Ireland. While the constitutional ban on abortion was condemned by abortion rights advocates for marginalising women's agency, the legislation which replaced it has not escaped criticism either. Therefore, questions surrounding the conceptualisation of women's agency in the 2018 referendum are still relevant today. Adopting a multimodal critical discourse analysis approach, this paper analyses signage from the weeks before the vote to examine the discursive construction of women's agency in the linguistic landscape of the referendum campaign. I argue that many mainstream campaign organisationsincluding those arguing for liberalisation of abortion lawswere complicit in the discursive diminishment of women's agency, suggesting that the campaign did not necessarily challenge prevailing ideologies of gender and agency.