Crime and Gender: Violence against Women in the Ukrainian Press in the First Half of the Twentieth Century
Anzhelika Dosenko1, Olga Khamedova2, Inha Pohrebniak3, Viktoria Solomatova4
1Anzhelika Dosenko, Institute of Journalism, Chair of Journalism and New Media, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University, Kyiv, Ukraine.
2Olga Khamedova, Institute of Journalism, Chair of Journalism and New Media, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University, Kyiv, Ukraine.
3Inha Pohrebniak, Institute of Journalism, Chair of Journalism and New Media, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University, Kyiv, Ukraine.
4Viktoria Solomatova, Department of Distant education, Kyiv international university of culture and arts, Kyiv, Ukraine.
Manuscript received on 13 August 2019. | Revised Manuscript received on 17 August 2019. | Manuscript published on 30 September 2019. | PP: 6316-6320 | Volume-8 Issue-3 September 2019 | Retrieval Number: C6044098319/2019©BEIESP | DOI: 10.35940/ijrte.C6044.098319
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© The Authors. Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP). This is an open access article under the CC-BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Abstract: This scientific research deals with the actual problem, that is the study of the language of criminal chronicles in the Western Ukrainian media discourse in the 1920-1930s. Object of analysis is news reports on gender violence in popular Western Ukrainian newspapers of the interwar twenty years. The chosen methodology is feminist discourse-analysis which allows us to identify the media representations of gender identity and to find out what ideological discourse has had symbolic hegemony, which gender regime was supported by language. It turns out that the language of criminal news fixes symbolic mechanisms for establishing power regimes. The texts of criminal news show gender stereotypes and prejudices against women, which traditionally functioned and articulated in public discourse. Gender violence was explained (and justified) by personal, religious and social reasons. The problem of domestic violence attracted journalists from the 1920s and 1930s. Victim women who dared to challenge patriarchal customs were appraised extremely subjectively, biasedly, often – in a negative way. Publications about sexual crimes (rape, sexual harassment) were rare, since this topic was banned in the Western Ukrainian public discourse of the 1920s-1930s. In Western Ukrainian popular magazines, the language of criminal news construed a gendered society, deleting power for men and exposing a woman to objectification. Journalists used certain linguistic strategies to support the dominant gender regime: author’s intentionality, peculiar journalistic formulation and focus of information, the specifics of structuring material and hidden meanings of the text.
Keywords: The Language of Violence, Gender Violence, Discourse, Discourse Analysis, Criminal Chronicle, Gender Regime, Linguistic Strategies.
Scope of the Article: Natural Language Processing