Language, Sexism and Misogyny The Reception of Women’s Political Speech

This paper examines linguistic sexism and misogyny in the light of the philosopher Kate Manne’s recent proposals regarding the general definitions of these concepts and their relationship. Using the reception of female politicians’ speech as an illustration, it argues that misogyny can be expressed through a range of interactional and representational practices; many of these would not amount to ‘hate speech’ in the legal sense, but that does not mean they are innocuous. From a feminist perspective linguistic misogyny, together with sexism, can most usefully be understood as fulfilling an important political function in patriarchal societies: policing women’s public speech and undermining their claims to authority.

The Acceptability of Feminine Job Titles in Italian Newspaper Articles A Survey Involving Italian Native Speakers

This paper describes a procedure to assess the acceptability of gender-inclusive linguistic structures. Informants were asked to provide an overall linguistic assessment of extracts from newspaper articles while unaware of the final objective of the survey, i.e. eliciting their opinions on the masculine and feminine forms of professions and titles. Although opinions varied, the results show an increase in the acceptability of feminine forms, probably strengthened by their frequent use in the media. Furthermore, those forms provide a solution to the morphological and syntactic inconsistencies considered by the informants as a violation of Italian grammar rules.

Narrating Gender Violence A Corpus-Based Study on the Representation of Gender-Based Violence in Italian Media

Using a corpus-based and cross-modal approach, this study explores mediatic linguistic representations of gendered violence. Specifically, we analyse a journalistic corpus (WItNECS, Women in Italian Newspaper Crime Sections) and a multimedia dataset of the Italian TV program Amore Criminale (AC). The corpus is explored via collocational analysis of key terms and topic modelling. AC is investigated with a multimodal analysis of speech and gestures. Finally, we compare similarities and differences of newspaper and television language. Findings from this innovative methodology bring new evidence on the mediatic representation of ‘women as victims’.

Combating Sexist Hate Speech The Work of the Council of Europe

This paper presents the Council of Europe current work on sexist hate speech and sexism. After an overview on sexist hate speech, its different forms, the factors contributing to it and the connection between sexist hate speech and freedom of expression, this contribution presents relevant Council of Europe standards and activities (including the new Committee of Ministers Recommendation on preventing and combating sexism), extracting from them the key elements that should guide governments, media, civil society and other relevant stakeholders in their action against sexism. A ‘checklist’ of indicators and actions to eliminate sexist hate speech is presented as a conclusion.

The Feminisation of Titles, Office and Profession Nouns in Algerian French The Case of the Press in the International Women’s Day

After 132 years of colonization, French remains anchored to Algeria. With nearly 14 million French speakers (33% of its population) is an interesting field of study. An analysis of the press released in March 2018, around the date of the international celebration of Women’s Day, will show that the use of professional nouns is quite diverse according to speakers, due to absence of established rules.

Discrimination and Hate and Sexist Speech in the Italian Law

Sexist language is an incitement to the stigmatization of women as women or of sexual orientation so that it contributes to maintaining the discriminatory situation of these categories. It can be included as a part of conduct in different crimes, but sexist language per se isn’t criminalized in Italy (freedom to manifest one’s thought is a right constitutionally guaranteed). Criminal law has a subsidiary function with respect to the ways in which the phenomena of hate and sexist speech must be combatted. Communication on the Web must be carefully regulated, with the involvement of managers in the processing of self-regulation, in particular the managers of the social networks.

Gendered Hate Speech in Swiss WhatsApp Messages

This paper provides a first manual analysis of the use of 14 gender-specific swear words in Swiss WhatsApp messages in (Swiss) German, French and Italian. We will show that gender-specific swear words only concern non-participants of the discourse when used offensively, in our data. When such items are directly addressed to the interlocutor, they are rather used ironically or even hypocoristically. Furthermore, we will show that gendered hate speech in this context is not a matter of mutual discrimination by the two sexes, but that Swiss WhatsApp users also refer to people of their own sex using gender-specific swear words.

For a Bottom-Up Approach to the Linguistic and Legal Definition of Hate Speech A Case Study of Offences Against Women

In addressing the legal definition of Hate Speech (HS), some important linguistic issues arise: the necessity of semantic precision of normative texts conflicts with the difficulty of tracing distinctive features of the phenomenon; the balancing with freedom of expression poses the question on the boundaries between opinions and verbal violence. Comparative studies on national laws show significant gaps in definitions, highlighting their negative effects. This paper discusses the problem analysing a corpus of 2,720 Facebook negative comments against women with decisional positions in Europe. Recurring textual strategies are identified testing a bottom-up approach, argued as the appropriate method to meet the current research challenges.

The Legal Framework on Hate Speech and the Internet Good Practices to Prevent and Counter the Spread of Illegal Hate Speech Online

Hate speech includes all forms of expression which spread, incite, promote or justify hatred towards a person or group. The expansion of the Internet has marked an important change in the phenomenon, insofar as content is no longer mediated by editors. Hate speech based on ethnic, racial and religious hatred is recognized as a violation of the human rights set out by the European and international standards. This is not the case for sexist hate speech, although this difference is not justified by the data. The lack of a shared regulatory definition leads to shortcomings in, or even the complete absence of victim protection. Gender equality and freedom of expression are interconnected: enabling hate speech against women and girls to go unpunished limits women’s freedom of information and deprives society of their voices. The balance must be struck by finding the tools for free speech. An overview of such tools is the goal of this contribution.

Assessing the Mixed or Generic Feminine as an Inclusive Language Strategy

Proposed grammatical gender-neutral language practices employing rephrasing, binomials, or abbreviated double forms are unlikely to achieve general acceptance or durably modify the linguistic system given their unusual graphical features, variable treatment of speech and writing, heavy processing requirements, increased volume, and overall complexity. In contrast, use of the feminine for mixed reference is well established for female-dominated professions such as nurse, draws on established linguistic resources, and preserves correspondance between written and spoken language. We provide examples of this strategy in several languages and discuss its advantages and shortcomings.