Stance-taking and gender: hateful representations of Portuguese women public figures in the NETLANG Corpus

This study examines hateful language directed at women public figures in the Portuguese newspaper section of the NETLANG Corpus (2018–2022), focusing on consistent stancetaking devices of misalignment and opposition from which patterns of gendered hateful discourse derive. The methodology is eminently qualitative aiming at discerning different terminologies (hate speech, misogynistic language, verbal aggression, anti-social discourse, impoliteness) and drawing from studies on stance (Englebretson, 2007), impoliteness studies (Culpeper, 2011), elements of the Appraisal framework (Martin & White, 2005) and prominently the theory of representation of social actors (Van Leeuwen, 1996). This complex theoretical framework allows for a detailed examination of the discursive nuances of adversarial positioning towards women in the public sphere which arrives at the following conclusions: misogynistic language is hateful language with the purpose of excluding women from participation in public life; gendered hateful language is intersectional to the extent it interacts with several societal and cultural factors (age, social class, provenance and prominently race); and finally, there is a balance to be found between gender intersectionality and the full impact that gendered hateful language has on all women, leading to their otherisation and consequent exclusion from public life.