'Slut I hate you' : A Critical Discourse Analysis of gendered conflict on YouTube

Sagredos, Christos and Nikolova, Evelin (2022) 'Slut I hate you' : A Critical Discourse Analysis of gendered conflict on YouTube. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 10 (1). pp. 169-196. ISSN 2213-1272

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Abstract

Adopting a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective, this paper seeks to explore the conflict emerging from the ways YouTube users index, reaffirm or challenge gender ideologies by examining 2,304 YouTube comments posted in response to the misogynistic Greek pop song Καριόλα σε μισώ ‘Slut I hate you’. Our textual analysis draws on the Discourse-Historical Approach, focusing on the lexicogrammatical choices and discursive strategies employed for the positive presentation of the self and the negative presentation of the other. Our findings suggest that: (a) there is a dialectic relationship between the gendered representations of the videoclip and the gender ideologies indexed by individual YouTube users; (b) the discursive negotiation of gender ideologies in anonymous, asynchronous and polylogal discussions is a highly polarised and antagonistic discourse activity, with most comments under the videoclip of the song falling under two broad categories, i.e. those sustaining and those challenging gendered aggression and patriarchal discourses; (c) although both groups resort to common discursive strategies (e.g. nomination and predication strategies that legitimise the authority of the in-group and delegitimise the out-group), they differ significantly in their argumentation and intensification/mitigation strategies, which allows commenters to take sides in a polarised debate and index their gender ideologies; (d) due to the pervasive power of dominant ideologies across all levels of context, the democratic and subversive potential of conflict on YouTube is limited but not pointless as counter-discourses may still gain visibility.