Media Representations of Femicide in the Guardian and Cumhuriyet Newspapers: A Corpus Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis

Date

2025-8-8

Author

Arısoy , Zeynep

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The intertwined relationship between language, media and gender has been a focal point of interdisciplinary discussions. Recent scholarship has shown that discourses surrounding women have become political sites through which gendered hierarchies are reinforced, particularly in societies where manhood is constructed as a central symbol of symbol of authority, power and dominance. Against this backdrop, using critical discourse analysis, this study aims to investigate the discursive construction of women and men as social actors in femicide news reports within two distinct national contexts; the United Kingdom and Turkey. To foreground left-wing political perspectives, the Guardian and Cumhuriyet have been selected as the primary newspapers of analysis, focusing specifically on the news articles published in 2024. The discursive analysis showed that women victims in the Turkish news coverage experienced symbolic erasure, being represented as passive subjects occupying stereotypical gendered roles such as mothers and teachers, while men are overrepresented and their criminal actions were justified and legitimized through various mechanisms. Whereas in the UK news, the plurality of womanhood was acknowledged, depicting them positively, while men's identities appeared subordinate to the representations of women and were overtly held accountable for their actions. Based on these findings, it is argued that the Cumhuriyet implicitly reinforces predominant patriarchal ideologies through its discursive practices and uses femicides as a central tool for conveying political commentary in relation to current governmentality, while the Guardian has a more progressive approach to the discursive representations it employs reflecting broader contemporary commitments to gender equality and social justice for all.

Subject Keywords

Femicide, Critical Discourse Analysis, Newspapers, Gender Representations

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/115474

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis