Her Goals are Quite Different. Strategies for Downplaying Violence against Women in Informal Discussions on the Internet

Abstract

Every year in Bulgaria there are publicly reported dozens of deaths of women, killed by their partners. It is a problem, broadly discussed in media. At the same time, there is a massive movement in the country against the ratification of the so called Istanbul Convention, a treaty of the Council of Europe against violence against women and domestic violence, (even from the leadership of the self-proclaimed leftist former Communist party). The voices proclaiming the need to preserve the so-called traditional values are also very popular. In this situation, it seems interesting with the help of the methods of Critical discouse analysis (CDA) to investigate the most common linguistic strategies and narratives used by people who downplay or defend violence against women. That is why two case studies are presented in this particular paper – the first one is a thread of posts on Twitter concerning the murder of a woman, who has been found dead at the International day against violence against women (25th November); and the second one is a forum thread of 100 posts that may be found after a piece of news about reported violence against a popular Bulgarian actress, published in the pro-European liberal online media Dnevnik on 4th December 2022.