Article published in:
Exploring Language Aggression against Women
Edited by Patricia Bou-Franch
[Benjamins Current Topics 86] 2016
► pp. 59–81

Gender ideology and social identity processes in online language aggression against women

This chapter examines language aggression against women in public online deliberation regarding crimes of violence against women. To do so, we draw upon a corpus of 460 unsolicited digital comments sent in response to four public service advertisements against women abuse posted on YouTube. Our analysis reveals that three patriarchal strategies of abuse — namely, minimize the abuse, deny its existence, and blame women — are enacted in the online discourse under scrutiny and shows how, at the micro-level of interaction, these strategies relate to social identity and gender ideology through complex processes of positive in-group description and negative out-group presentation. We also argue that despite the few comments that explicitly support abuse, this situation changes at implicit, indirect levels of discourse.

Keywords: violence against women, ideology, social identity, YouTube
Published online: 29 June 2016
https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.86.03bou
References

References

Adams, Peter J., Alison Towns, and Nicola Gavey
1995 “Dominance and Entitlement: The Rhetoric Men Use to Discuss their Violence towards Women.” Discourse & Society 6: 387–406. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Androutsopoulos, Jannis
2011 “From Variation to Heteroglossia in the Study of Computer-Mediated Discourse.” In Digital Discourse: Language in the Media, ed. by Crispin Thurlow and Kristine Mroczek, 277–298. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bengoechea, Mercedes
2006 “Rompo tus miembros uno a uno (Pablo Neruda): De la reificación a la destrucción en los discursos masculinos sobre la mujer.” Cuadernos de Trabajo Social 19: 25–41.Google Scholar
2010 “El lenguaje y la cultura como mecanismos de producción y legitimación de la violencia de género.” Paper presented at the International Conference on Gender Violence: Contexts, Discourses and Representations , Valencia, November 2010.
Benwell, Bethan
(ed.) 2006 Masculinity and Men’s Lifestyle Magazines. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Benwell, Bethan, and Elizabeth Stokoe
2006 Discourse and Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Boonzaier, Floretta
2008 “ ‘If the Man Says so you Must Sit, then you Must Sit’: The Relational Construction of Woman Abuse: Gender, Subjectivity and Violence.” Feminism Psychology 18: 183–206. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bostock, Jan, Maureen Plumpton, and Rebeka Pratt
2009 “Domestic Violence against Women: Understanding Social Processes and Women’s Experiences.” Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology 19: 95–110. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bou-Franch, Patricia
2013 “Domestic Violence and Public Participation in the Media: The Case of Citizen Journalism.” Gender and Language 7 (3):275–302. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bou-Franch, Patricia, and Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich
2014 “Conflict Management in Massive Polylogues: A Case Study from YouTube.” Journal of Pragmatics. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bou-Franch, Patricia, Nuria Lorenzo-Dus, and Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich
2012 “Social Interaction in YouTube Text-Based Polylogues: A Study of Coherence.” Journal of Computer Mediated Communication 17: 501–521. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary
2003 “Theories of Discourse as Theories of Gender: Discourse Analysis in Language and Gender Studies.” In The Handbook of Language and Gender, ed. by Janet Holmes and Miriam Meyerhoff, 43–68. Malden, MA: Blackwell. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Christie, Christine
1998 “Rewriting Rights: A Relevance Theoretical Analysis of Press Constructions of Sexual Harassment and the Responses of Readers.” Language and Literature 7 (3): 214–234. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Coates, Linda, and Allan Wade
2004 “ ‘Telling it Like it Isn’t’: Obscuring Perpetrator Responsibility for Violent Crime.” Discourse & Society 15: 499–526. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2007 “Language and Violence: Analysis of Four Discursive Operations.” Journal of Family Violence 22: 511–522. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
De Fina, Anna
2000 “Orientation in Immigrant Narratives: The Role of Ethnicity in the Identification of Characters.” Discourse Studies 2 (2): 131–157. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2006 “Group Identity, Narrative and Self Representations.” In Discourse and Identity, ed. by Anna De Fina, Deborah Schiffrin, and Michael Bamberg, 351–375. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
De Fina, Anna, Deborah Schiffrin, and Michael Bamberg
(eds) 2006 Discourse and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ehrlich, Susan
2008 “Sexual Assault Trials, Discursive Identities and Institutional Change.” In Analysing Identities in Discourse, ed. by Rosana Dolón, and Julia Todolí, 159–177. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Eisikovits, Zvi, and Eli Buchbinder
1997 “Talking Violent: A Phenomenological Study of Metaphors Battering Men Use.” Violence against Women 3 (5): 482–498. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fairclough, Norman
2003 Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fairclough Norman, and Ruth Wodak
1997 “Critical Discourse Analysis.” In Discourse as Social Interaction, ed. by Teun A. van Dijk, 258–284. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Fernández Díaz, Natalia
2004 La Violencia Sexual y su Representación en la Prensa. Barcelona: Anthropos.Google Scholar
García-Bedolla, Lisa
2003 “The Identity Paradox: Latino Language, Politics and Selective Dissociation.” Latino Studies 1: 264–283. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar
2010 “The YouTubification of Politics, Impoliteness and Polarization.” In Handbook of Research on Discourse Behavior and Digital Communication: Language Structures and Social Interaction, ed. by Rotimi Taiwo, 540–563. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar, Nuria Lorenzo-Dus, and Patricia Bou-Franch
2013 “Relational Work in Anonymous, Asynchronous Communication: A Study of (Dis)Affiliation on YouTube.” In Linguistic Aspects of Intercultural Pragmatics, ed. by Istvan Kecskes, and Jesus Romero-Trillo, 343–365. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar, Patricia Bou-Franch, and Nuria Lorenzo-Dus
2013 “Despierten, Latinos (Wake up, Latinos): Latino Identity, US Politics and YouTube.” Journal of Language and Politics 12 (4): 558–582. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Herring, Susan C.
1999 “Interactional Coherence in CMC.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 4 (4). http://​onlinelibrary​.wiley​.com​/doi​/10​.1111​/j​.1083​-6101​.1999​.tb00106​.x​/fullGoogle Scholar
Jackson, Sue
2001 “ ‘Happily never after’: Young Women’s Stories of Abuse in Hetero-Sexual Love Relationships.” Feminism & Psychology 11 (3): 305–321. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine
2004 “Introducing Polylogue.” Journal of Pragmatics 36 (1): 1–24. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kiesler, Sara, Jane Siegel, and Timothy W. McGuire
1984 “Social Psychological Aspects of Computer-Mediated Communication.” American Psychologist 39 (10): 1123–1134. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Eun-Ju
2007 “Deindividuation Effects on Group Polarization in Computer-Mediated Communication: The Role of Group Identification, Public Self-Awareness and Perceived Argument Quality.” Journal of Communication 57: 385–403. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lledó, Eulàlia
2010 “La Representación de la Violencia de Género en los Medios de Comunicación.” Paper presented at the International Conference on Gender Violence: Contexts, Discourses and Representations , Valencia, November 2010.
Lockwood Harris, Kate, Kelly E. Palazzolo, and Matthew W. Savage
2012 “ ‘I’m not Sexist, but.. .’: How Ideological Dilemmas Reinforce Sexism in Talk about Intimate Partner Violence.” Discourse & Society 23 (6): 643–656. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria, Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, and Patricia Bou-Franch
2011 “On-Line Polylogues and Impoliteness: The Case of Postings Sent in Response to the Obama Reggaeton YouTube Video.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (10): 2578–2593. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mildorf, Jarmila
2002 “ ‘Opening up a Can of Worms’: Physician’s Narrative Construction of Knowledge about Domestic Violence.” Narrative Inquiry 12 (2): 233–260. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mills, Sara
2008 Language and Sexism. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Morris, Anne
2009 “Gendered Dynamics of Abuse and Violence in Families: Considering the Abusive Household Gender Regime.” Child Abuse Review 18: 414–427. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Muehlenhard, Charlene L., and Leigh A. Kimes
1999 “The Social Construction of Violence: The Case of Sexual and Domestic Violence.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 3 (3): 234–245. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Papacharissi, Zizi
2004 “Democracy Online: Civility, Politeness and the Democratic Potential of Online Political Discussion Groups.” New Media and Society 6 (2): 259–283. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Reicher, Steve, Russell Spears, and Tom Postmes
1995 “A Social Identity Model of Deindividuation Phenomena.” European Review of Social Psychology 6: 161–198. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Santaemilia, José, and Sergio Maruenda
2013 “Semantic Prosodies and Discourse Constellations in (De)Legitimising Naming Practices in Newspaper Discourse.” In Applied Intercultural Pragmatics, ed. by Istvan Kecskes, and Jesús Romero Trillo, 439–457. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Siegel, Jane, Vitaly Dubrovsky, Sara Kiesler, and Timothy W. McGuire
1986 “Group Processes in Computer-Mediated Communication.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 37: 157–187. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sproull, Lee, and Sara Kiesler
1986 “Reducing Social Context Cues: Electronic Mail in Organizational Communication.” Management Science 32: 1492–1512. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Stokoe, Elizabeth
2010 “ ‘I’m not Gonna Hit a Lady’: Conversation Analysis, Membership Categorization and Men’s Denials of Violence towards Women.” Discourse and Society 21 (1): 59–82. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Talbot, Mary M.
1997 “ ‘Randy Fish Boss Branded a Stinker’: Coherence and the Construction of Masculinities in a British Tabloid Newspaper.” In Language and Masculinity, ed. by Sally Johnson and Ulrike H. Meinhof, 173–187. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah
1999 The Argument Culture: Stopping America’s War of Words. New York: Ballantine Books.Google Scholar
Trinch, Shonna
2007 “Deconstructing the ‘Stakes’ in High Stakes Gatekeeping Interviews: Battered Women and Narration.” Journal of Pragmatics 39: 1895–1918. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Turner, Graeme
2010 Ordinary People and the Media: The Demotic Turn. London: Sage.Google Scholar
van Dijk, Teun A.
1989 “Structures of Discourse and Structures of Power.” Communication Yearbook 12: 18–59.Google Scholar
1995a “Discourse Analysis as Ideology Analysis.” In Language and Peace, ed. by Christina Schäffner, and Anita Wenden, 17–33. Aldershot: Dartmouth Publishing.Google Scholar
1995b “Ideological Discourse Analysis.” New Courant 4: 135–161. Special issue Interdisciplinary Approaches to Discourse Analysis, ed. by Eija Ventola, and Anna Solin.Google Scholar
1998 “Opinions and Ideologies in the Press.” In Approaches to Media Discourse, ed. by Allan Bell and Peter Garrett, 21–63. London: Blackwell.Google Scholar
2006 “Ideology and Discourse Analysis.” Journal of Political Ideologies 11 (2): 115–140. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
van Leeuwen, Theo, and Ruth Wodak
1999 “Legitimizing Immigration Control: A Discourse-Historical Analysis.” Discourse Studies 1 (1): 83–118. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wheeler, David
2009 “Violent Images? The Representation of Gender Violence in Contemporary British and American Cinema.” Plenary Lecture Delivered at the 2009 Gentext Meeting , University of Valencia.
Cited by

Cited by other publications

Dynel, Marta & Fabio I.M. Poppi
2020. Arcana imperii*. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 8:1 ► pp. 57 ff. Crossref logo
Hatzidaki, Ourania
2020. “An equal right to comment”. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict ► pp. 1 ff. Crossref logo
Jaki, Sylvia, Tom De Smedt, Maja Gwóźdź, Rudresh Panchal, Alexander Rossa & Guy De Pauw
2019. Online hatred of women in the Incels.me forum. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 7:2 ► pp. 240 ff. Crossref logo
Pontrandolfo, Gianluca
2019. La campaña contra el ‘manspreading’ entre paisaje semiótico y eco mediático. Spanish in Context 16:2 ► pp. 243 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 26 september 2020. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.