Abstract
This paper reports on a manual monitoring of online representations of LGBT persons in the Republic of Cyprus for the period April 2015–February 2016. The article contextualizes the prevalence of “hate speech” in online Greek Cypriot comments against LGBT individuals, and, more generally, against non-heterosexuals. Adopting a Foucauldian position vis-à-vis the social and discursive construction of sexuality, we outline, first, the socio-historical context (Fairclough 1989, 2003) with a focus on LGBT rights in the Republic of Cyprus and the nationalistic project construing sexualities. We then examine the different levels of discursive discrimination practices, providing a snapshot of the types of “hate speech” referring to this topic typically found in such an environment. The focus is on identification of the frames used to construct LGBT identities, and their perception.[2] We thus address the way in which sexuality is constructed within a compulsory and hegemonic heterosexuality and heteronormativity. We analyze our data i.e. comments focused on the LGBT community, with corpus linguistic tools (Baker et al. 2008; Brindle 2016) as well as through a qualitative examination of the identified frames. Our analysis confirms an interface between nationalism and compulsory hegemonic heteronormativity in the Republic as well as the influence of the Orthodox Church and its beliefs (Kamenou 2011a, 2011b, 2016).
About the author
Fabienne H. Baider is associate professor at the University of Cyprus and works on semantics and discourse from a socio-cognitivist and contrastive perspective (French, English and Greek). Her research includes gender and language, conceptual metaphors and emotions in political discourse, on-line communication with a focus on hate speech. She has published internationally in linguistic journals and volumes (e.g. [ed.] with Georgeta Cislaru Linguistic Approaches to Emotions, Benjamins, 2014). Her methodology includes corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis. She is the coordinator of the C.O.N.T.A.C.T. EU Social justice project (reportinghate.eu).
References
Altman, Meryl. 1990. How not to do things with metaphors we live by. College English 52(5). 495–506.10.2307/377538Search in Google Scholar
Allport, Gordon. 1954. The Nature of Prejudice. Cambridge, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing.Search in Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism London: Verso.Search in Google Scholar
Archakis, Argiris & Sophia Lampropoulou. 2009. Talking different heterosexualities: the permissive, the normative and the moralistic perspective – evidence from Greek youth storytelling. Discourse & Society 3. 307–326.10.1177/0957926509102400Search in Google Scholar
Article 19. 2018. LGBT hate speech report on central Asia Retrieved from: https://www.article19.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/LGBT-Hate-Speech-Report-Central-Asia_March2018.pdf (accessed 15/4/2018).Search in Google Scholar
Baider, Fabienne. 2004. Hommes galants, femmes faciles. Étude socio-sémantique. L’Harmattan: Paris.Search in Google Scholar
Baider, Fabienne. 2013. The saliency hypothesis: affects and emotions. In Istvan Kecskes & Jesus Romero Trillo (eds.), Research Trends in Intercultural Pragmatics, 7–25. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9781614513735.7Search in Google Scholar
Baider, Fabienne. 2017. Thinking globally, acting locally: mainstream supremacist concepts within a local socio-historical context. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 5(2). 178–204.10.1075/jlac.5.2.02baiSearch in Google Scholar
Baider, Fabienne. forthcoming. Au coeur des discours refusant l’Altérité (sexuelle ou ethnique) : la notion de déviance. Déviance et société (Special issue on Cybercommunication and humiliation).Search in Google Scholar
Baider, Fabienne & Maria Constantinou. 2017. We’ll come at night and find you, traitor. Cybercommunication in the Greek-Cypriot ultra-nationalist space. In Ourania Hatzidaki & Dionysis Goutsos (eds.), Crisis and Conflict in Contemporary Greece: Integrating Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics 411–452. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Search in Google Scholar
Baider, Fabienne & Monika Kopytowska. 2017. Conceptualising the Other: Online discourses on the current refugee crisis in Cyprus and in Poland. Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 13(2). 203–223.10.1515/lpp-2017-0011Search in Google Scholar
Baker, Paul, Costas Gabrielatos, Majid KhosraviNik, Michał Krzyżanowski, Tony McEnery & Ruth Wodak. 2008. A useful methodological synergy? Combining critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics to examine discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press. Discourse and Society 19. 273–306.10.1177/0957926508088962Search in Google Scholar
Banerjee, Sikata. 2003. Gender and nationalism: the masculinization of Hinduism and female political participation in India. Women’s Studies International Forum 26(2). 167–179.10.1016/S0277-5395(03)00019-0Search in Google Scholar
Barsalou, Laurence W. 1992. Frames, concepts, and conceptual fields. In Adrienne Lehrer & Eva Feder Kittay (eds.), Frames, Fields, and Contrasts, 21–74. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum.Search in Google Scholar
Bednarek, Monika. 2008. Semantic preference and semantic prosody re-examined. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 4(2). 119–139.10.1515/CLLT.2008.006Search in Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977 [1972]. Outline of a Theory of Practice (vol. 16), trans. R. Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511812507Search in Google Scholar
Brewer, Paul R. 2003. Values, political knowledge, and public opinion about gay rights: a framing-based account. Public Opinion Quarterly 67. 173–201.10.1086/374397Search in Google Scholar
Brindle, Andrew. 2016. The Language of Hate: A Corpus Linguistic Analysis of White Supremacist Language New York: Routledge.10.4324/9781315731643Search in Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 2009. Performativity, precarity and sexual politics. Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana 4 (3). i–xiii.10.11156/aibr.040303eSearch in Google Scholar
Cameron, Deborah & Don Kulick. 2003. Language and Sexuality Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511791178Search in Google Scholar
Cameron, Deborah & Don Kulick. 2006. Heteronorms. In Deborah Cameron & Don Kulick (eds.), The Language and Sexuality Reader, 165–168. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203013373Search in Google Scholar
Charteris-Black, Jonathan. 2004. Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1057/9780230000612Search in Google Scholar
Chrysoloras, Nikolas. 2004. Why Orthodoxy? Religion and Nationalism in Greek Political Culture. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 4(1). 40-61.10.1111/j.1754-9469.2004.tb00057.xSearch in Google Scholar
Chrysoloras, Nikolas. 2010. Religion and National Identity in the Greek and Greek-Cypriot Political Cultures. Unpublished PhD thesis, The London School of Economics and Political Science. London. Retrieved from: http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3026/1/U615978.pdf (accessed 15/3/2018).Search in Google Scholar
Coates, Jennifer. 2013. The discursive production of everyday heterosexualities. Discourse & Society 24(5). 536–552.10.1177/0957926513486070Search in Google Scholar
Cockburn, Cynthia. 2004. The Line: Women, Partition and the Gender Order in Cyprus London/New York: Zed Books.Search in Google Scholar
Connel, Robert W. 1995 Masculinities. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Search in Google Scholar
Cravens, Royal Gene. 2015. Morality politics and municipal LGBT policy adoption: a rare event analysis. State & Local Government Review 47(1). 15–25.10.1177/0160323X15575185Search in Google Scholar
Douglas, Mary. 2001 [1966]. Purity and Danger New-York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Duschinsky, Robbie. 2013. Abjection and self-identity: towards a revised account of purity and impurity The Sociological Review 61. 709–727.10.1111/1467-954X.12081Search in Google Scholar
Enloe, Cynthia. 1990. Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Search in Google Scholar
Entman, Robert. 1993. Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication 43(4). 51–8.10.1111/j.1460-2466.1993.tb01304.xSearch in Google Scholar
Fagley, N. S. & Paul M. Miller. 1990. The effect of framing on choice. Interactions with risk-taking propensity, cognitive style, and sex. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 16. 496–510.10.1177/0146167290163008Search in Google Scholar
Fairclough, Norman. 1989. Language and Power London: Longman.Search in Google Scholar
Fairclough, Norman. 2003. Analyzing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203697078Search in Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles J. 1982. Frame Semantics Linguistics in the Morning Calm. Seoul: Hanshin Publishing Co.Search in Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1978. The repressive hypothesis. History of Sexuality, vol. 1. New York: Pantheon Books.Search in Google Scholar
Giora, Rachel. 2003. On Our Mind: Salience, Context and Figurative Language. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195136166.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Hadjipavlou, Maria. 2010. Women and Change in Cyprus: Feminism, Gender and Conflict London/New York: I.B. Tauris.10.5040/9780755620487Search in Google Scholar
Huckin, Thomas. 2002. Textual silence and the discourse of homelessness. Discourse & Society 13(3). 347–372.10.1177/0957926502013003054Search in Google Scholar
Hull, Kathleen E. 2001. The political limits of the rights frame. Sociological Perspectives 44(2). 207-23210.2307/1389611Search in Google Scholar
Kamenou, Nayia. 2011a. Cyprus is the Country of Heroes, Not of Homosexuals. Sexuality, Gender and Nationhood in Cyprus Unpublished PhD thesis, King’s College London. Available at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/files/12780640/Studentthesis-Nayia_Kamenou_2012.pdf (accessed 5/4/2018).Search in Google Scholar
Kamenou, Nayia. 2011b. Queer in Cyprus: national identity and the construction of gender and sexuality. In Lisa Downing & Robert Gillett (eds.), Queer in Europe (Queer Interventions Series), 25–40. Surrey and Burlington, VT: Ashgate.Search in Google Scholar
Kamenou, Nayia. 2016. Sexual Politics – Party politics: the rules of engagement in the case of Cyprus. In Giorgos Charalambous & Christophoros Christophorou (eds.), Party-Society Relations in the Republic of Cyprus: Political and Societal Strategies, 129–148. London/New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Kapsou, Margarita, Anna Christofi & Maria, Epaminonda. 2011. A Report on Sexual Orientation in Cyprus: Mapping the Sociopolitical Climate, Experiences and Needs. Nicosia: Family Planning Association & Accept LGBT Cyprus.Search in Google Scholar
Karayanni, Stavros S. 2016. Through the narrow straits: Researching homophobia and sexual oppression in Cyprus. In Constantinos N. Phellas (ed.), Researching Non-Heterosexual Sexualities, 187–200. London/New York: Routledge. Ebook.Search in Google Scholar
Karayanni, Stavros S., Andreas G. Philaretou. & Constantinos N. Phellas (eds.). 2006. Sexual Interactions: The Social Construction of Atypical Sexual Variations and settings. Boca Raton: Universal Publishers.Search in Google Scholar
KhosraviNik, Majid & Eleonora Esposito. Online hate, digital discourse and critique: Exploring digitally mediated discursive practices of gender-based hostility. Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 14(1). 45–68.10.1515/lpp-2018-0003Search in Google Scholar
Kopytowska, Monika. 2009. Corpus linguistics and an eclectic approach to the study of news – the mechanism of framing. In Barbara Lewandowska-Tomasczyk & Katarzyna Dziwirek (eds.), Studies in Cognitive Corpus Linguistics 83–109. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Search in Google Scholar
Kopytowska, Monika, Łukasz Grabowski & Julita Woźniak. 2017. Mobilizing against the Other: Cyberhate, refugee crisis and proximization. In Monika Kopytowska (ed.), Contemporary discourses of hate and radicalism across space and genres 57–97. Amsterdam/Philadephia: John Benjamins.10.1075/bct.93.11kopSearch in Google Scholar
Kopytowska Monika & Paul Chilton. 2018. “Rivers of Blood”: Migration, fear and threat construction. Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 14(1). 133–161.10.1515/lpp-2018-0007Search in Google Scholar
Kristeva, Julia. 1982 [1980]. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Kristeva, Julia & Kelly Oliver. 2002. The Portable Kristeva. NewYork: Colombia University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Kulick, Don. 2010. Humorless lesbians. In Janet Holmes & Meredith Marra (eds.), Femininity, Feminism and Gendered Discourse 59–83. Cambridge Scholars Press.Search in Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald Wayne. 1991. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Descriptive Application. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Lillian, Donna L. 2007. A thorn by any other name: Sexist discourse as hate speech. Discourse and Society 18 (6). 719–40.10.1177/0957926507082193Search in Google Scholar
Love, Robbie & Paul Baker. 2015. The hate that dare not speak its name? Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 3(1). 57–86.10.1075/jlac.3.1.03lovSearch in Google Scholar
Millar, Sharon, Fabienne H. Baider & Stavros Assimakopoulos. 2017. The C.O.N.T.A.C.T. methodological approach. In Stavros Assimakopoulos, Fabienne H. Baider & Sharon Millar (eds.), Online Hate Speech in the European Union: A Discourse-Analytic Perspective 17–23. Berlin: Springer.10.1007/978-3-319-72604-5_2Search in Google Scholar
Modinos, Alecos. 2002. Homosexual life in Cyprus. In Robert T. Francoeur (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Sexuality, 294–296. New York, NY: Continuum.Search in Google Scholar
Mosse, George Lachman. 1985. Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe. New York: Howard Fertig.Search in Google Scholar
Mosse, George Lachman. 1996. The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Motschenbacher, Heiko. 2012. I think Houston wants a kiss right? Linguistic constructions of heterosexualities at Eurovision Song Contest press conferences. Journal of Language and Sexuality 1(2). 127–150.10.1075/jls.1.2.01motSearch in Google Scholar
Nagel, Joane. 1998. Masculinity and nationalism: gender and sexuality in the making of nations. Ethnic and Racial Studies 21(2). 242–269.10.1080/014198798330007Search in Google Scholar
Partington, Alan, Alison Duguid & Charlotte Taylor. 2013. Patterns and Meanings in Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/scl.55Search in Google Scholar
Phellas, Constantinos N. (ed). 2016. Researching Non-Heterosexual Sexualities. London: Routledge. Ebook.10.4324/9781315605593Search in Google Scholar
Rendle-Short, Johanna. 2005. I’ve got a paper-shuffler for a husband: Indexing sexuality on talk-back radio. Discourse & Society 16(4). 561–578.10.1177/0957926505053057Search in Google Scholar
Richardson-Self, Louise. 2018. Woman-hating: On misogyny, sexism, and hate speech. Hypathia 33(2). 256–272.10.1111/hypa.12398Search in Google Scholar
Semino, Elina, Zsofia Demjen & Jane Elizabeth Demmen. 2016. An integrated approach to metaphor and framing in cognition, discourse, and practice, with an application to metaphors for cancer. Applied Linguisticsdoi:10.1093/applin/amw028.Search in Google Scholar
Sinclair, John. 2004. Trust the Text: Language Corpus and Discourse London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203594070Search in Google Scholar
Stephan, Walter G., Oscar Ybarra & Guy Bachman. 1999. Prejudice toward immigrants. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 29. 2221–2237.10.1111/j.1559-1816.1999.tb00107.xSearch in Google Scholar
Stephan, Walter G., Oscar Ybarra & Kimberly Rios Morrison. 2009. Intergroup threat theory. In Todd D. Nelson (ed.), Handbook of Prejudice, Stereotyping, And Discrimination, 43–60. New York: Psychology Press.Search in Google Scholar
Tadlock, Barry L. 2014. Issue framing and transgender politics: an examination of interest group websites and media coverage. In Jami K. Taylor & Donald P. Haider-Markel (eds.), Transgender Rights and Politics: Groups, Issue Framing, & Policy Adoption, 25–28. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.Search in Google Scholar
Tadlock, Barry L., Ann C. Gordon & Elizabeth Popp. 2007. Framing the issue of same-sex marriage: traditional values versus equal rights. In Craig A. Rimmerman & Clyde Wilcox (eds.), The Politics of Same-Sex Marriage, 193–214. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar
Trimikliniotis, Nicos & Stavros S. Karayanni. 2008. The Situation Concerning Homophobia and Discrimination on Grounds of Sexual Orientation: Cyprus. Policy Document for Simfiliosi. Retrieved from: http://www.statewatch.org/news/2010/jan/cyprus-homophobia-report.pdf (accessed 15/3/2018).Search in Google Scholar
Tryfonidou, Alina. 2017. The legal position of LGBT persons and same-sex couples in Cyprus. Cyprus Review 29. 183–213.Search in Google Scholar
van Dijk, Teun A. 1998. Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach London: Sage.Search in Google Scholar
Vassiliadou, Myria. 2002. Questioning nationalism: the patriarchal and national struggles of Cypriot women within a European context. European Journal of Women’s Studies (9)4. 459–482.10.1177/13505068020090040601Search in Google Scholar
Wallin, Anita, Carita Paradis & Konstantinos V. Katsikopoulos. 2016. Evaluative polarity words in risky choice framing. Journal of Pragmatics 106. 20–38.10.1016/j.pragma.2016.09.005Search in Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth & Michael Meyer. 2016 Methods of Critical Discourse Studies 3rd edition. London: Sage.10.4324/9781315540535Search in Google Scholar
© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
