Discourses of sexual violencea critical analysis of the representation of victims and perpetrators on twitter

Resumo

This thesis critically traces the linguistic resources and patterns deployed by tweeters to discuss gendered discourses and patriarchal oppression concerning sexual violence. There are two primary aims of this study: 1) to examine tweeters’ discourses and ideologies regarding sexual violence and how they contribute to the negotiation of victim-perpetrator identities, and 2) to identify the role of evaluative language in the (re)production and resistance of gendered discourses and ideologies. To do so, this thesis takes AsJ Brett Kavanaugh’s controversial nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States as a case study. After his nomination was made public, he was accused of attempted rape by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Her allegations were followed by similar claims from two more women. The nomination became a major topic on Twitter as tweeters used different hashtags to express (dis)affiliation. Dr. Ford also became the target of verbal aggression by those who supported his nomination. However, her claims were also supported by tweeters who validated her testimony and, in turn, sparked the re-emergence of hashtag feminism. Two corpora of tweets containing the hashtags #KavanaughConfirmation (N = 1,753,370 words) and #NoKavanaughConfirmation (N = 612,416 words) were compiled to analyze and compare each dataset in relation to the objectives of this study. The corpora were investigated from a corpus-assisted discourse analysis approach (Partington et al., 2013) which combined corpus linguistic tools with Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA) (Lazar, 2005, 2018) and Appraisal Theory (2005). The findings suggest that tweeters invoked discourses relating to gender-based violence to both denounce and perpetuate rape culture and patriarchal oppression in American society. Such discourses contributed to the negotiation of the identities of victims and perpetrators, which were unstable and fluid depending on tweeters’ socio-political groups. Antifeminist and patriarchal discourses were found to contribute to the portrayal of AsJ Kavanaugh as a political victim, thus portraying Dr. Ford as a political aggressor. In contrast, discourses of veracity and feminism gave credibility to Dr. Ford’s testimony and opposed the confirmation. These discourses depicted AsJ Kavanaugh as a liar and a sexual aggressor. On the other hand, the analysis of evaluative language revealed that negative Appraisal resources predominated in both corpora to convey immoral and unethical evaluations and collective emotional distress, which further contributed to the unstable construction of victim-perpetrator identities. All in all, this thesis provides insights into tweeters’ digital practices to discuss gendered dynamics and resist/reproduce patriarchal discourses derived from rape culture. In addition, it also shows the fruitful combination of corpus linguistics methods, FCDA, and Appraisal Theory in the analysis of gender-based violence and social media data.