The discursive route of misogyny: political arena, journalistic interference and “sense of humour”

Abstract

This study investigates sociodiscursive imaginaries of the feminine reflected both by the political speech and by the journalistic voice that reports it. The paper starts from the assumption that, still today, the naturalization of symbolic violence against women is: (i) blatant in a political instance pronouncement – which justifies it under a humorous pretext; and (ii) condemned by a wide-circulation journalistic instance – which reports it under a critical bias. For a qualitative examination of the corpus, this work, that is based mainly on the Semiolinguistic Discourse Analysis as theoretical scope, presents a triple dimension methodology – situational, discursive and formal. In addition, by proposing a multiple theoretical axis, the paper also adresses the topics of: (i) sociodiscursive imaginaries of the feminine, based primarily on bell hooks (2019), Bourdieu (2014) and Sarmento et al. (2019); (ii) representations of sayings under the political contract and journalistic interference, based mainly on Charaudeau (2006a; 200b) and Marcuschi (1991); (iv) humorous act, supported mainly by Bergson (1978) and Charaudeau (2006c). The suggested investigation, covering itineraries of violence against women, seems to point to the resistance of a stereotyped hegemonic sense of the feminine in the political arena, justified by a certain “sense of humor”, and its contestation by journalistic interference.