The Stylistics of Advocacy in Women’s Caucuses

Abstract

Advocacy discourse constitutes one of the most influential forms of institutional communication through which women's caucuses promote gender equality, shape public opinion, and influence policy-making. From a feminist stylistic perspective, this study investigates the stylistic realization of advocacy in selected policy briefs and advocacy reports published by the Women's Refugee Commission (WRC). Rather than limiting the analysis to isolated rhetorical devices, the study adopts a comprehensive stylistic approach that examines how advocacy is linguistically constructed through textual-conceptual functions, transitivity patterns, figurative language, and persuasive appeals. Drawing upon feminist stylistics and systemic functional linguistics, the study explores how linguistic choices contribute to representing refugee women, foregrounding structural inequality, and legitimizing policy intervention. The analysis demonstrates that WRC discourse consistently employs prioritization, representation of actions, active transitivity, metaphor, metonymy, and logical persuasion to construct advocacy as evidence-based, institutionally credible, and socially transformative. The study concludes that stylistic analysis provides valuable insights into the linguistic mechanisms through which women's caucuses advocate for gender justice and social reform.