“They cannot be black and fat”: Analyzing verbal violence in sociodiscursive reactions produced by readers in Brazilian digital journalistc contexts

Abstract

Verbal violence, configured by multiple semioses (FAIRCLOUGH, 2003) as offensive, has a useful space in the virtual environment. Anonymity and the lack of regulation of face-to-face interaction cause social agents to mobilize lexicogramatical resources, producing violent discourses. This choice can generate offenses and insults, in order to promote and perpetuate unequal power relations. This article aims to analyze copyright voices inserted in the news published by BHAZ and by news paper O Tempo, both from Belo Horizonte – MG, about a broadcast via WhatsApp of a job offer characterized as a crime of injury. It will be analyzed not only two news texts, one from each vehicle, but also the comments of internet users about this fact. For this, we will use the categories of analysis of the verbal sociodiscursive reactions (GOMES, 2020), of the representational and identificational meanings (FAIRCLOUGH, 2003) intertwined with intersectional studies (AKOTIRENE, 2019; CRENSHAW, 2002, 2004; NASH, 2008). Our analysis allowed us to observe that verbal violence is constitutive of racist and fatophobic systems of oppression, reproducing exclusive power relations that regulate bodies, ratifying the often opaque and naturalized privilege of the white and thin body.