The Woman Was Raped - A Critical Discourse Analysis of Swedish News Media Coverage of Rape and Sexual Assault

Abstract

Departing from the question of how linguistic representations of sexual crime are connected to social practices around sexuality, this discourse analysis looks into 30 news articles on sexual crime to identify discourses around male and female sexuality. As most sexual crimes are committed by men and against women, the analysis focuses on connecting discursive descriptions of men and women in relation to sexual crime, to power relations between men and women in society. It investigates whether the identified discourses contribute to sustaining an unjust power relation between men and women where women are subjugated.
The analysis builds on theories on gender constructivism and feminist theory departing from Simone de Beauvoir and Judith Butler, and discourse theory and theories on the relation between power, discourse and sexuality as formulated by Michel Foucault and Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, a method developed and defined by Norman Fairclough and Lilie Chouliaraki, the texts are analysed in relation to their role in social practices.
The findings in this analysis are in line with the referenced previous research centred around the theme of how victims and perpetrators of sexual crime are portrayed linguistically in the media, in police reports and court documents. They show that linguistic constructions of sexual crimes, victims and perpetrators in the investigated news texts use discourses around male and female sexuality by centring the criminal activity around the female victim and by using passive form. Several discourses around female sexual behaviour are identified as used in the material to put part of the blame for sexual crimes on the female victim, e.g. responsibility to protect one’s sexual virtue by saying no and by not being intoxicated.

Popular Abstract

This Critical Discourse Analysis of news articles from the two largest (by circulation) broadsheet newspapers in Sweden aims to identify discourses on female and male sexuality in the linguistic construction of sexual assault and rape within the written news genre in Sweden. This is done as a means to connect the linguistic representation of sexual crimes, their victims and perpetrators with the gendered patterns of who performs sexual crimes (men) and against whom these crimes are directed (women). The purpose of showing this connection is to shed some light on the role of linguistic constructions of male and female sexuality in maintaining an unjust power relation between men and women in social practices concerning sexual, and other, behaviour.
The analysis departs from a view of social practices, what we do in our daily social lives, as dialectically connected to language use, meaning what we do affects our language and our language affects what we do. Discourse is treated in the analysis as ways of understanding the world that at the same time constitute the world, and they are seen as shaped in and maintained by social processes. These ways of understanding the world are regarded as temporary, they can change with social processes. But discourse is at the same time understood as something that can constitute objectivity by cementing a particular way of understanding something. The purpose of this analysis is therefore to try and see beyond what is seemingly objective, to try and spot discourse on sexuality in how sexual crimes are written about.
In this analysis, 30 articles depicting sexual crimes, their victims and perpetrators are analysed using Critical Discourse Analysis. Using theories of gender constructivism, where sex and gender are viewed as social constructions that are shaped and maintained in social processes, descriptions of female victims and male perpetrators are investigated in order to spot allusions to female and male sexuality making it seem as though both victim and perpetrator are guilty of the crime. Furthermore, the descriptive words used for the crimes themselves are analysed in the same manner.
The results show that in the short descriptions of sexual crimes within the news genre in the two largest Swedish broadsheet newspapers, male perpetrators and female victims are described in ways alluding to stereotypes of female and male sexuality. The female victims are placed in an active linguistic position in the descriptions of the crimes, and properties such as age, actions around the crime, level of intoxication are mentioned in almost every article in the material. The male perpetrators are rarely placed in an active linguistic position in the descriptions of the crimes, and their personal properties, actions before, during or after the crime or levels of intoxication are rarely mentioned. The conclusion of this analysis is that this difference is in line with discourse on male and female sexuality, where female sexuality is more tightly controlled in social processes, leading to women receiving part of the blame for the sexual crimes committed against them.

• author: Lindqvist, Lisa
• supervisor: Birgitta Ericson
• organization: Sociology
• course: SOCM13 20172
• year: 2018
• type: H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
• subject: Social Sciences
• keywords: sexual crime, rape, discourse on sexuality, critical discourse analysis, gender constructivism
• language: English
• id: 8933687
• date added to LUP: 2018-01-31 15:09:59
• date last changed: 2018-01-31 15:09:59