Paris 2024, Olympics – the Algerian boxer Imane Khelif became the focus of one of the Games’ most divisive controversies after her Italian opponent Angela Carini abandoned their bout, prompting a wave of false claims that Khelif was a man or a transgender woman. This chapter examines how the case was (re)presented in the United States press through a Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis (Baker et al. 2008; Taylor & Marchi 2018) of twenty-five newspaper articles published between 1 and 15 August 2024, sampled across the left-centre-right political spectrum. The articles were processed quantitatively via Sketch Engine against the English Web 21 (enTenTen21) reference corpus, with a focus on keywords and collocations to linguistically identify lexis and social actors. The qualitative analysis combines Entman’s (1993; 2004) framing functions and van Leeuwen’s (2008; 2023) framework for the representation of social actors. The analysis outlines four frames – verification, threat, engineered controversy, and harm/care – showing that each is realised through specific discursive strategies, mainly an activation-passivation contrast whereby Khelif is represented either as aggressor or target according to the dominant frame. Findings primarily show that the claim of Khelif’s biological maleness was distributed asymmetrically in content (naturalised in some articles and contested in others) but symmetrically in effect, since hostile and supportive discourses together amplified the controversy. The analysed news coverage also exemplifies the dual approach of intersectionality (Crenshaw 1989; Hill Collins & Bilge 2020) as both the frame of a problem and the ground of its solution, the same categorical apparatus marking Khelif as a threat and mobilising her defence. The chapter argues that newspapers contribute to discursive salience and sustain category errors even in refuting them, and regardless of political leaning. This amplification-through-refutation process should raise awareness in research dedicated to hate speech in digital environment (Balirano & Hughes 2020).
Jabs of Hate: Intersectional Representative Frames Around Olympic Gold-Medallist Imane Khelif. A Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis
Roberto Esposito
In corso di stampa
Abstract
Paris 2024, Olympics – the Algerian boxer Imane Khelif became the focus of one of the Games’ most divisive controversies after her Italian opponent Angela Carini abandoned their bout, prompting a wave of false claims that Khelif was a man or a transgender woman. This chapter examines how the case was (re)presented in the United States press through a Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis (Baker et al. 2008; Taylor & Marchi 2018) of twenty-five newspaper articles published between 1 and 15 August 2024, sampled across the left-centre-right political spectrum. The articles were processed quantitatively via Sketch Engine against the English Web 21 (enTenTen21) reference corpus, with a focus on keywords and collocations to linguistically identify lexis and social actors. The qualitative analysis combines Entman’s (1993; 2004) framing functions and van Leeuwen’s (2008; 2023) framework for the representation of social actors. The analysis outlines four frames – verification, threat, engineered controversy, and harm/care – showing that each is realised through specific discursive strategies, mainly an activation-passivation contrast whereby Khelif is represented either as aggressor or target according to the dominant frame. Findings primarily show that the claim of Khelif’s biological maleness was distributed asymmetrically in content (naturalised in some articles and contested in others) but symmetrically in effect, since hostile and supportive discourses together amplified the controversy. The analysed news coverage also exemplifies the dual approach of intersectionality (Crenshaw 1989; Hill Collins & Bilge 2020) as both the frame of a problem and the ground of its solution, the same categorical apparatus marking Khelif as a threat and mobilising her defence. The chapter argues that newspapers contribute to discursive salience and sustain category errors even in refuting them, and regardless of political leaning. This amplification-through-refutation process should raise awareness in research dedicated to hate speech in digital environment (Balirano & Hughes 2020).I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
