Abstract

The news has a crucial role in spreading language changes while at the same time providing evidence for consolidated forms. This article examines the linguistic forms and strategies used in the Italian TV news to refer to female ministers, in three Italian newscasts during two legislatures (XVII and XVIII). What comes out from a corpus-based analysis confirms the expected male-centrism: the masculine forms of ministr- are more frequent than the feminine ones. Nonetheless, a comparison across years and editors reveals some differences, which show that political institutions and editorial lines can contribute to spread gender-fair language or, vice versa, to consolidate male-centred language.