Women, Crime and Gender in the Private Sphere: Femminicidio

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Gender, Discourse and Ideology in Italian

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Abstract

Exploring the historical gendered fixed roles for women and men in the private, i.e. heterosexual relationships, demonstrates that these prove equally detrimental to women. The femminicidio, the crime in which men kill their on-going or former partners, is a widespread phenomenon worldwide as well as in Italy. Qualitative and quantitative language investigations show that politics is dealing with this issue as an abstract phenomenon which affects women. Reporting on the topic in Italian newspapers reproduces dangerous narratives which recount how male jealousy and hurt feelings are at the core of this gendered crime. Furthermore, specific language is used to bridge the gap between a void in the legislation and this systematic atrocity perpetrated by men against women.

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Appendices

Appendix 1: Single Words

In this appendix (and in the following one), I present the list of the first 50 single words (and multi-words in Appendix 2), arranged in descending order of their keyness score.

In the translation column I provide information that could be useful, e.g. whether the past participle is masculine or feminine and therefore referring to a woman or a man; similarly, I have indicated the grammatical gender of some specific nouns (Table 5.25).

Table 5.25 List of single words in the news corpus, presented in keyness score (KS) and absolute frequency (AF)

Appendix 2: Multi-words

See Table 5.26.

Table 5.26 List of multi-words in the news corpus, presented in keyness score (KS) and absolute frequency (AF)

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Formato, F. (2019). Women, Crime and Gender in the Private Sphere: Femminicidio. In: Gender, Discourse and Ideology in Italian. Palgrave Studies in Language, Gender and Sexuality. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96556-7_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96556-7_5

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