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Part of
Exploring Language Aggression against Women
Edited by Patricia Bou-Franch
[Benjamins Current Topics 86] 2016
► pp. 37–58

De-authorizing rape narrators

Stance, taboo and privatizing the public secret

This chapter examines how reviewers take silence-sustaining or silence-breaking stances toward rape in online reviews of anti-terrorism expert, Jessica Stern’s (2010) book, Denial: A Memoir of Terror. I analyze how reviewers recontextualize the story of this uncontroversial rape and its narrator. The data consist of 47 reviews, ranging from professional reviewers at major newspapers to ‘citizen reviewers’ found on commercial bookstores’ websites and on readers’ blogs. Using stance as my analytic framework (Jaffe 2009), I show how readers align their reviews in ways that either authorize or de-authorize the narrator and her narrative.
Keywords: (de)authorizing, book reviews, denial, Jessica Stern, rape, silence, stance
Published online: 29 June 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.86.02tri
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Ehrlich, Susan
2019. Language and Sexual Violence in the Legal System. In The Oxford Handbook of Language and Sexuality, DOI logo
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