Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict - Online First

This is a linguistic anthropological study on quotidian human-artifact interaction and language ideology manifest on ATM language selection screens. It is a comparative study conducted in a small region in the former Yugoslavia at the meeting point of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Montenegro, where the linguistic differences are minimal, and the political, ideological, state, and institutional distinctions are pronounced. This article aims to use the specificities of this linguistic landscape to make visible an ideological layer that is present (yet invisible) elsewhere in the world, drawing attention to political, ideological, and territorial aspects of everyday language identification that are already common knowledge to many people in the former Yugoslavia, particularly in post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina, yet go unnoticed elsewhere.

This paper explores how discourses of discrimination against sex workers are discursively reproduced or challenged in polylogal (multi-participant) interactions in digital environments such as YouTube. Drawing on stancetaking (Du Bois 2007) and the stance dimensions of evaluation and alignment (Kiesling 2018, 2021), we analyze how commenters’ stances towards sex work can be linked to (banal) whorephobia — i.e., the discursive manifestation of discriminations against sex workers. Focusing on two threads of comments found under a YouTube video, we suggest that whorephobia operates along a scalar continuum, with aggression against sex work/ers ranging from explicitly negative stances to more subtle and banalized ones that may even go unnoticed. In our data, (banal) whorephobia was traced in stances that indexed: (a) low evaluation of/low alignment with participants expressing sex-positive views or supporting that sex workers’ rights advocacy can be compatible with feminist agendas; and/or (b) high evaluation of/high alignment with participants who view sex work as inherently immoral or exploitative in line with Christian conservative or radical feminist discourses. We conclude that what makes banal whorephobia particularly concerning is that it manifests through stances that, though not explicitly hostile, may still reinforce sex workers’ stigmatization and social exclusions, often in ways that may seem socially acceptable or well justified.

In the present study, I investigate the construction of otherness in the Greek anti-racist short film Jafar. Drawing on Critical Discourse Studies, I argue that although the film appears to combat racism, it simultaneously reproduces practices of discrimination. This contradiction is achieved via liquid racism, namely a multi-layered and, thus, difficult to detect form of racism (Weaver 2011, 2016). More specifically, by combining Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) grammar of visual design with Bucholtz and Hall’s (2005) model for identities-in-interaction, I show that the film allows two different representations of otherness: (i) the caring Other, which resists the stereotype of the criminal migrant (anti-racist positioning) and (ii) the useful Other, which regulates migrant inclusion via eligibility criteria of usefulness (racist positioning).

This paper examines autobiographical reports of acts of (non-)verbal aggression against four Greek women pioneers in education, medicine, art and dance. These aggressive acts had been launched by some of their male contemporaries against the women’s efforts to occupy authority or elite positions. The analysis, which falls within the scope of historical (im)politeness research (Kádár and Culpeper 2010), focuses specifically on the rarely addressed issue of how the autobiographers discursively deal with the narrated incidents. The four women’s real-time reactions to, and post hoc appraisals of, the aggressive acts are categorized and discussed by applying and extending Bousfield’s (2007) model of responses to impoliteness. Furthermore, contemporary witness and third-party contributions, offensive and defensive, are analysed in the light of relevant models (Dobs and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich 2013; Bou-Franch and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich 2014). It is found that all four women take a dignified and defiant stance towards the recorded female-exclusionary behaviours, evidencing a common, diachronically/intergenerationally consistent self-heroizing disposition.

In this study, we investigate the use of two pairs of Russian prepositions—v‍/‍na (‘in/on’) and iz/s (‘from’) with the noun Ukraine in X discourse. Since Ukrainian independence in 1991, v Ukraine and iz Ukraine have been used to indicate Ukrainian sovereignty and na and s used as their unmarked counterparts as defined by Russian linguistic tradition. Using a web-based set of tools called TWIG, we examine how posts containing the prepositional phrases construct stances toward the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Specifically, we examine the frequency of the prepositional phrases, their collocations, and the semantics conveyed by the collocational patterns. Our findings show notable differences in the collocational patterns of posts using v Ukraine versus na Ukraine. Analysis of these collocations suggests that posts using v Ukraine have a proximation effect to the conflict, while those using na Ukraine have a distancing effect.

The Brexit process created a loss of rights and heightened hostility towards EU migrants within the UK, even among groups previously shielded from such animosity, notably EU academics. This paper is based on 24 clear instances of microaggressions, and two bordering hate speech involving EU academics in England and synthetises the psychology/philosophy literature on microaggressions with linguistic frameworks of “rapport management” and “impoliteness triggers” leading to a novel understanding of the phenomenon. Microaggressions are defined as a specific type of impoliteness “of the mild kind”, characterised by repetition at the individual and/or the collective level, which produces feelings of annoyance, irritation and shock. This study shows that Brexit-microaggressions usually involve social identity face and the breach of equity/association sociality rights. They mostly take the shape of formulae echoing slogans entrenched in the discourses of Brexit and arise out of a mismatch between pro-Brexit comments uttered in the presence of an EU migrant.

The Internet serves as a dynamic and expansive space where numerous groups seek to exchange and disseminate their views. Some of those groups aim to promote hateful ideologies, bigotry, conspiracy theories while externalizing their anger. To achieve this, a spectrum of online platforms is utilized, ranging from mainstream social networks to underground forums. Notably, imageboards stand out as fertile ground where these ideologies flourish, due to anonymity, community engagement, and a plethora of hateful content. This study endeavors to examine the prevalence of bigotry in these spaces within the Brazilian context. Natural language processing algorithms provide the possibility to explore discursive features of massive text sets, extracting latent information and patterns in a relatively simple and automated way. This study shows how prejudice forms the basis of the different discourses found in Brazilian imageboards. Notably, these discourses not only echo historically rooted hateful ideologies but also assimilate conspiratorial perspectives and instances of bigotry emanating from non-Brazilian imageboards.

The burka has become a key symbol of the supposed ‘Islamification’ of Europe and has led to a series of ‘burka bans’ (Bouattia 2019; Bracke 2012; Hancock 2015). In the debate surrounding these bans, a ‘femonationalist convergence’ has been identified by Farris (2012, 2017) in which the nationalist political right, neoliberal policy makers, and some feminist organisations converge in adopting the language of gender equality to argue that the burka is a symbol of patriarchal oppression. In this paper, I relate this femonationalist convergence to the maintenance of hegemonic femininity, which can be broadly defined as the privileging of femininity that is complementary to white supremacist capitalist patriarchy (hooks 2000). Using feminist critical discourse analysis (Lazar 2005), I analyse the representation of Muslim women in an article on the burka written by former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, for The Telegraph in 2018. I show how Johnson instrumentalises femonationalist discourse to justify his Islamophobic marginalisation of Muslim women. I conclude that Johnson used this article to lay the groundwork for his Conservative leadership bid the following year and to garner popular support for a shift to the far-right in British politics.

In Canada, which has two official languages, sexual violence and impropriety have been identified as problems in the military for at least 25 years (see Duval-Lantoine 2022). In the military’s efforts to address these problems, the institutional language has been identified as problematic (Deschamps 2015; Arbour 2022). This paper addresses the labels for sexual violence and impropriety in Canadian English and French using large corpora of language data: the Corpus of Historical American English, the Corpus of Contemporary Amerian English, the enTenTen20 corpus, the frTenTen20 corpus, the Strathy Corpus, and the Canadian Hansard. Findings show differences between the most widely used labels in American and Canadian data and between English and French. This raises questions about the labels adopted by the Canadian military and the extent to which sexual violence and impropriety can be addressed without a critical review of the language in use.

This paper aims to unveil the most frequent discursive practices of aggressive language addressed at three female Spanish politicians on X (formerly Twitter) and the themes around which these practices revolve. Isabel Díaz-Ayuso, Irene Montero, and Yolanda Díaz were selected for analysis. A mixed-methods analysis of 1,500 randomly retrieved posts was conducted. Aggressive language aimed at delegitimizing the politicians was manually coded based on existing taxonomies. A data-driven taxonomy was obtained with the most frequently involved themes to assess gender-based representations. Quantitative findings pointed to interindividual differences that were qualitatively analyzed. Aggression towards Yolanda Díaz was conveyed through insults and negative comments questioning her intelligence, physical appearance, and political affiliation. Replies to Isabel Díaz-Ayuso questioned the morality of her decisions regarding social issues. At the same time, Irene Montero received more insults and sexist negative comments focusing on her sexuality and subordination to male figures.