Debating Saudi womanhood: A corpus-aided critical discourse analysis of the representation of Saudi women in the Twitter campaign against the 'Male Guardianship' system

In Saudi Arabia, the law stipulates that no political parties, civil society organisations or marches are allowed. However, the impact made by social media sites during the 2011 Arab Spring made women’s rights activists realize that they too could benefit from the power of social media to bring about socio-political change. It offered a public platform on which to highlight and contest the unequal social status of women in Saudi society. As a consequence, numerous social media campaigns have been launched by Saudi women (e.g. ‘Women2Drive’, ‘Saudi Women Revolution’, ‘Baladi’ [My Country]1). Arguably the most high-profile of these has been the #EndMaleGuardianshipSystem Twitter campaign which, since its inception in 2016 has sparked widespread public debate about the Male Guardianship System (hereafter MGS), whereby Saudi women’s freedoms and decision-making powers are subordinated to those of a male relative. This chapter presents a corpus-aided critical analysis of the linguistic strategies employed in that campaign.