Feminist critical discourse analysis to analyze discourses about femicide. A methodological proposal of Latin America

Abstract

Femicides are the result of social and cultural discriminatory structures; these are perpetuated through communicative processes in the private and public spheres. Previous studies about the media coverage in Latin America found narratives of blaming the victims and justification of the perpetrators. But they did not analyze other discourses such as the discussion of public policies, social movements, academic studies and the representation of other social actors like the families of the victims, social organizations, activists, experts and authorities, which are published by the same media and have influence in the public debate and meaning negotiation. This work aims to address the gap in the literature with a methodological proposal with a holistic and feminist approach, created for the Latin American context in which the relations of gender, race, ethnicity and coloniality have a fundamental role in the configuration of power relations. The main objective is to examine how the patriarchal power is discursively reproduced and resisted by multiple actors in the public sphere. By means of four specific objectives: (1) Analyze the representation of victims and perpetrators. (2) Analyze the sensationalist use of the information. (3) Analyze counter discourses and legitimation, by analyzing the prominence, the representation of the information sources, and the argumentative supports. (4) Identify the ruptures in the hegemonic patriarchal discourse and meaning negotiation, with a temporal dimension comparative study. To exemplify the use of the methodology, it was applied to the analysis of one case in Mexican newspapers; it was found that traditional media reproduce counter discourses: discriminatory and feminist resistance; but just the first is legitimized with argumentative supports that suggest veracity. The discourse of resistance tends to be sustained in emotional arguments. The above suggest that the media reproduces progressive discourse, but they contribute to subvert it, which helps to maintain the status quo and the hierarchical patriarchal power relations.