Unraveling Conflicting Attitudes Toward Rape: Victimization in Discourse and the Fine Line Between a Good and Bad Victim

• Autores: Olga O'Toole
• Localización: Difficult neighborhoods: the semiotics of conflict in culture / Sachiyo M. Shearman (ed. lit.), Wladyslaw Chlopicki (ed. lit.), Wladyslaw Witalisz (ed. lit.), Linda G. Kean (ed. lit.), 2025, ISBN 9781469696553, págs. 71-89
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Victimology studies have pointed to several factors that might be viewed as contributing to the reasons for which a person might be raped, including precipitation, lifestyle,and deviant place (Hannon, 2004). In assessing the level of victim-blaming that takesplace in public discourses (i.e., blame attribution theories (Grubb & Turner, 2012),rape victims are appraised either negatively or positively depending on the circumstances surrounding the assault. This includes the events accompanying the rape, therelationship or lack thereof with the alleged rapist, and the perceived lifestyle of thevictim. This conflict of differing attitudes toward rape victims forms so-called bordersbetween victim-supporting discourses and victim-blaming ones. As one site in whichconflicting ideas of what makes an acceptable rape victim are comments sections inonline media, the analysis investigates digital comments taken from American newsmedia texts about rape written between 2015 and 2023. Three types of rape are analyzed for the linguistic representations of attitudes to rape victims in cases of strangerrape (including violent rapes committed by more than one offender), acquaintancerape, and rape in which the perpetrator is a well-known (i.e., famous) figure. In particular, the stance of online users toward victims is analyzed where indirect appraisementof actors in rape is concerned, including metaphorical representations of actors, aswell as expressions of modality and negation. This analysis demonstrates that moredirect, negative evaluation is expressed toward victims of acquaintance rape and rapein which the offender is a well-known or famous individual