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

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

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Published online: 29 June 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.86.03bou
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.
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