Opposition as victimhood in newspaper debates about same-sex marriage

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...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Turner, Georgina, Mills, Sara, Van der Bom, Isabelle, Coffey-Glover, Laura, Paterson, Laura L., Jones, Lucy
Format: Article
Published: SAGE 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/44401/
Description
Summary: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