The other-granted self of Korean “comfort women”

Bringing together “identity as agency” (Schiffrin, 1996; De Fina, 2003), Bamberg’s (1997) three-level positioning, and Tannen’s (2008) narrative types, I analyze three interview narratives of Korean women coerced into the Japanese military’s sexual slavery during World War II, commonly known as “comfort women”. Through an eye toward “others” – e.g., Japanese soldiers, “comfort station” managers, interviewers, and sociocultural and sociopolitical forces – I investigate the manipulation of the women’s agency with their identities positioned as victims, rather than survivors. Meaning-making strategies, such as “constructed dialogue” (Tannen, 2007[1989]), repetition, deixis, and third turns, present the ways in which various others objectify and marginalize the women as well as control their stories. These illuminate how the women’s identities are granted and defined by others. This other-granted identity work reinforces aspects of language ideologies and ideologies of being silenced.

Repertoires of conflict-related sexual violence: Introducing the RSVAC data package

Scholars increasingly call for documentation and analysis of specific forms of conflict-related sexual violence. Moreover, accountability for crimes is stronger when specific patterns of victimization are documented. This article introduces the Repertoires of Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict (RSVAC) data package, which assembles reports from 1989 to 2015 of forms of sexual violence by government/states forces, insurgent/rebel organizations, and pro-government militias for each conflict and year. RSVAC compiles the reported prevalence of eight forms of sexual violence – rape, sexual slavery and forced marriage, forced prostitution, sexual mutilation, forced pregnancy, forced sterilization and abortion, non-penetrative sexual torture, and sexual abuse (as well as that of multiple-perpetrator reports of each form). It includes extensive qualitative notes on reported incidents, as well as ‘conflict manuscripts’ that include the relevant portions of source documents. Disaggregating ‘sexual violence’ into its distinct forms enables analysis of the reported presence of forms of sexual violence across time, conflicts, and organizations. We illustrate its usefulness by highlighting hitherto neglected global patterns it suggests, and also discuss limitations, potential biases and underreporting that users need to take into account. We outline several research questions that the data can help answer and suggest how the data package could inform policy efforts to address sexual violence and its consequences.