Opposition as victimhood in newspaper debates about same-sex marriage

Turner, Georgina; Mills, Sara; Van der Bom, Isabelle; Coffey-Glover, Laura; Paterson, Laura L.; Jones, Lucy

Abstract

In this paper, we take a queer linguistics approach to the analysis of data from British newspaper articles that discuss the introduction of same-sex marriage. Drawing on methods from CDA and corpus linguistics, we focus on the construction of agency in relation to the government extending marriage to same-sex couples, and those resisting this. We show that opponents to same-sex marriage are represented and represent themselves as victims whose moral values, traditions, and civil liberties are being threatened by the state. Specifically, we argue that victimhood is invoked in a way that both enables and permits discourses of implicit homophobia

Citation

Turner, G., Mills, S., Van der Bom, I., Coffey-Glover, L., Paterson, L. L., & Jones, L. (2018). Opposition as victimhood in newspaper debates about same-sex marriage. Discourse and Society, 29(2), https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926517734422

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 19, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Nov 1, 2017
• Publication Date: Mar 1, 2018
• Deposit Date: Jul 25, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 1, 2017
• Journal: Discourse & Society
• Print ISSN: 0957-9265
• Electronic ISSN: 1460-3624
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 29
• Issue: 2
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926517734422
• Keywords: homophobia; queer linguistics; corpus linguistics; critical discourse analysis;; same-sex marriage; equal marriage rights; victimhood; agency; news discourses; UK press
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/962475
• Publisher URL: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0957926517734422