GENDER: VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
PHOTO: 123RF
abuse of children and the 2012 gang rape, torture and
murder of a woman on a New Delhi bus by Akshay Thakur,
Pawan Gupta, Vinay Sharma and Mukesh Singh.
The book starts with a diachronic (or longitudinal)
study of a decade’s worth of media reports and examines
and compares language use during that period, including
emerging (or constant) trends since the occurrence of
#MeToo. The collection of texts – the ‘corpus’ – forms the
basis for the analysis. Dr Tranchese uses corpus linguistics,
a technologically advanced analytical method, as a
research framework. This approach allows her to study
large bodies of text and detect language patterns through
advanced computer processing techniques.
“Patterns in language use are never random but
typically hide some form of ideology or discourse,”
Dr Tranchese says. “That means when we spot a pattern,
there’s usually something there to investigate.”
Media conditioning
Together with this quantitative approach to language
analysis, Dr Tranchese uses a range of other techniques
to study discourse; for example, systemic functional
grammar (SFG) – selecting ways of saying (or writing)
from a range of virtually endless choices. SFG allows
researchers to systematically group such choices into
specific grammatical categories, so that patterns can be
detected not only at the level of words, but also at the
level of grammar.
In her previous research on media reporting of rape,
Dr Tranchese has shown that rape survivors are often
reported in the media as the central participants or
actors in mental or emotional processes, such as thinking
or feeling – she ‘thought’, she ‘felt’; not ‘she said’. This
contrasted starkly with the language attributed to lawand-order
institutions, whose words were conveyed as
Patterns in
language use are
never random
but typically
hide some form
of ideology or
discourse. That
means when we
spot a pattern,
there’s usually
something there
to investigate.
– Alessia Tranchese
clear and authoritative through the more neutral verbs
telling or saying.
“What’s the message when law-and-order institutions
get to express ‘facts’, but women only present
‘opinions’?” Dr Tranchese asks. “Why aren’t the women
‘sayers’ when these articles are about them?”
She says her research – which has also investigated
the language used by misogynous online groups and in
pornography – reveals the existence of ingrained male
entitlement to override women’s right to their bodies
and voices.
This sense of entitlement, however, does not originate
within the media, online discourse or pornography,
Dr Tranchese stresses. It was already present, pervading
society right down to its use of language, in which
women have historically been made invisible. She says
the internet and other media has simply amplified this.
While a flurry of research papers and a book covering
this subject are underway, Dr Tranchese is also keen to
extend the impact of her research beyond the academic
and teaching spheres, to bring it into the world at large.
The desire to incorporate language research and social
change is based on a view, common in linguistics circles,
that society and language are interconnected: “Language
mirrors society but does so in ways that also allow it to
influence society,” she says.
She has identified several opportunities for impact
outside the immediate fields of academic research and
teaching. For example, there are opportunities to assist
police to detect online harassment of women based
on linguistic features, or raise awareness through sex
education. “It’s important to me that my research brings
about social change. I would find it limiting if I just studied
these things and left it at that. When you see injustice,
you have to do something to make it right.”
ISSUE 1 / 2020
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