Escorts’ narratives about negative commercial sex encounters and sexual harassment : A critical discourse study

Nikolova, Evelin and Atanasova, Dimitrinka and Unger, Johann (2024) Escorts’ narratives about negative commercial sex encounters and sexual harassment : A critical discourse study. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

This thesis explores the ways an online community of self-identified sex workers represent negative commercial sex encounters and sexual harassment. The dataset comprises threads totalling 70,000 words from the ‘Warnings & Wasters’ board of the Support and Advice for Escorts Forum. To study the narratives of escorts, I adopt a critical discourse studies lens and I combine the discourse historical approach and the narrative practice approach, which to the best of my knowledge, have not been previously used together in linguistic research. This novel combination offers a comprehensive lens for analysing individual stories shared in digital contexts. I use positioning analysis and affective positioning to explore how escorts position clients, themselves, and event sequence in the world of the story (taleworld) at Positioning Level 1, themselves vis-à-vis other members of the forum in the here-and-now (storyrealm) at Positioning Level 2, and themselves in relation to broader societal discourses (i.e., regarding sex work) beyond the current storytelling situation (above-and-beyond) at Positioning Level 3. In so doing, this thesis enriches our understanding of how sex workers use language to talk about workplace abuse, therefore making a significant contribution to the field of sociolinguistics, which has largely neglected the language of sex workers. Findings suggest that escorts’ narratives in the ‘Warnings & Wasters’ board primarily revolve around the breaking of agreements/pushing of boundaries, time- wasting, economic damage, verbal abuse, violation of privacy and dignity, and clients’ health and substance abuse issues. These narratives often vary in structure and content, depending on the type of violation. The analysis of escorts’ narratives showed that at Positioning Level 1 clients are portrayed negatively in terms of their role in the storyworld (e.g., as a boundary pusher, stalker/harasser) and escorts as victims and/or professionals who in most instances actively try to maintain their boundaries. These representations are achieved mainly relationally i.e., the ways characters are portrayed is construed through their interaction with each other via a range of discourse features and positioning cues. At Positioning Level 2, tellers positioned themselves as supportive colleagues vis-à-vis fellow escorts. Apart from the act of posting a warning, which in itself implies this, tellers also made this explicit by directly asking others to protect themselves (e.g., through imperatives such as ‘I highly recommend to avoid’, ‘Be careful ladies’). A key finding of the analysis is that tellers positioned themselves as responsible for instances of economic damage, but they did not do so in relation to sexual violence, therefore challenging societal myths about sex work and consent. At Positioning Level 3, escorts also positioned themselves as individuals who are negatively affected by the stigmatisation and marginalisation of sex work/ers. This was predominantly materialised in affective positionings of fear (i.e., fear of reporting, fear of being outed, fear of asserting boundaries) or distress and frustration with clients’ disrespect. With regards to sexual harassment, findings suggest that escorts’ understanding of the phenomenon is confined to unwanted repetitive contact. Nevertheless, this thesis uncovers previously unrecognized forms of sexual harassment unique to the context of sex work, expanding the current understanding of this phenomenon. It also reveals how typical patterns of sexual harassment, commonly acknowledged in other work environments, manifest differently in the realm of sex work. Finally, findings underscore the influence of the stigmatization and legal constraints of sex work in the UK which foster a power imbalance and contribute to a cycle of underreported workplace abuse, exacerbating the marginalization and vulnerability of sex workers.