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Article In: Internet Pragmatics: Online-First Articles

“Caught in the glare of ageism and misogyny”

A discursive-pragmatic analysis of gendered ageism on Madonna’s Instagram

 | Universidad Pablo de Olavide
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Abstract
This article investigates the discursive construction of gendered ageism in Instagram user-generated comments responding to Madonna’s public denunciation of ageism and misogyny. Applying mainstream models of impoliteness (Culpeper, Jonathan. 2011. Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, . 2016. “Impoliteness strategies.” In Interdisciplinary Studies in Pragmatics, Culture and Society, ed. by Alessandro Capone, and Jacob L. Mey, 421–445. Cham: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) and conceptualisations of violence against women facilitated by digital technology (Esposito, Eleonora, and Sole Alba Zollo. 2021. “‘How dare you call her a pig, I know several pigs who would be upset if they knew’: A multimodal critical discursive approach to online misogyny against UK MPs on YouTube.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 9(1): 44–75. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), the study analyses a corpus of 1,930 English-language comments using a mixed-methods, discursive-pragmatic approach. The findings reveal that Madonna is pathologised through routinised forms of body shaming, gender stereotyping, and moral degradation. Pathologisation mediates between micro-level discursive actions and macro-level ideological formations: body shaming, pseudo-diagnostic insults, condescending questions, disgust emojis, and intensified textese are the pragmatic means through which gendered ageism is normalised. The root of this misogynistic abuse seems to be ageist and sexist sociocultural beliefs, which are manifested through specific discursive actions. By foregrounding the discursive realisation of gendered ageism, this study advances discursive-pragmatic research on digital violence against women.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Digital violence against women
    • 2.2The interplay between ageism and sexism
    • 2.3Discursive pathologisation as an interface concept
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Sampling procedure and data
    • 3.2Theoretical frameworks and analytic procedure
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1Pathologisation through sexism and ageism
      • 4.1.1Body shaming
      • 4.1.2Gender stereotyping or gatekeeping
      • 4.1.3Moral degradation
    • 4.2Discursive patterns conveying sexism and ageism
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Author queries
  • References
References (82)
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