Moving from the etymological and semantic roots of the subject, our aim is to read and understand the rape victim socio-cultural stigma in the collective imagination. The aim is to present a systematic and illustrative review of the discursive-textual realisations of a chronicle-judicial story of rape from a media and cross-media perspective, using coordinates and interpretative categories belonging to critical discourse analysis. Among the fundamental requirements of the notion of textuality, at the basis of media communication practices (traditional and non-traditional), there is that of "intertextuality", which concerns the set of relations that the text necessarily entertains with other texts alive in the memory of the receiver. The operative system of media communication is therefore able to narrate a new fact, by means of a diegetic setting that is anything but original, yet on the contrary pregnant with pre-knowledge and, consequently, pre-judgments socially shared by the same community. Recently UNESCO appealed to journalists to raise awareness about the mediatical practice of clickbait and victim blaming: dealing with gender violence means that we must turn to an extremely grave matter for all humanity, we must think about prejudices and stereotypes and break the silence to get violence out of the private sphere. “Media are our windows to the world”, but equally they are fed by our cultural and cognitivesemantic parameters. So we look at the world from this window without “gender lenses” and our vision is nearsighted. We have tried to resort to applied sociolinguistics’ tools along with media and cross-media categories to make critical analysis of some typical mainstream discourse about rape. What kind of woman, what victim is told by traditional and social media narratives? We’ll try to describe it in view of our ancient mental habit’s representation of male and female sexuality. There still a connection to the latin stuprum, linked to “abuse against a virgin”, as the “perfect victim”?
THE SEMANTICS OF RAPE. SOCIO-SEMIOTIC AND LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF MEDIA FEMALE PORTRAITS IN RAPE CASES
alice migliorelli
2023-01-01
Abstract
Moving from the etymological and semantic roots of the subject, our aim is to read and understand the rape victim socio-cultural stigma in the collective imagination. The aim is to present a systematic and illustrative review of the discursive-textual realisations of a chronicle-judicial story of rape from a media and cross-media perspective, using coordinates and interpretative categories belonging to critical discourse analysis. Among the fundamental requirements of the notion of textuality, at the basis of media communication practices (traditional and non-traditional), there is that of "intertextuality", which concerns the set of relations that the text necessarily entertains with other texts alive in the memory of the receiver. The operative system of media communication is therefore able to narrate a new fact, by means of a diegetic setting that is anything but original, yet on the contrary pregnant with pre-knowledge and, consequently, pre-judgments socially shared by the same community. Recently UNESCO appealed to journalists to raise awareness about the mediatical practice of clickbait and victim blaming: dealing with gender violence means that we must turn to an extremely grave matter for all humanity, we must think about prejudices and stereotypes and break the silence to get violence out of the private sphere. “Media are our windows to the world”, but equally they are fed by our cultural and cognitivesemantic parameters. So we look at the world from this window without “gender lenses” and our vision is nearsighted. We have tried to resort to applied sociolinguistics’ tools along with media and cross-media categories to make critical analysis of some typical mainstream discourse about rape. What kind of woman, what victim is told by traditional and social media narratives? We’ll try to describe it in view of our ancient mental habit’s representation of male and female sexuality. There still a connection to the latin stuprum, linked to “abuse against a virgin”, as the “perfect victim”?I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
