Penetrating Language

The study presented in this book is a corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis of pornography. In its critical spirit, it focuses on the socially contested question whether pornography makes its consumers objectify humans and in particular women in their thinking. Objectification is divided into fragmentation (reducing people to their body parts), physicalization and visualization (conceptualizing people primarily in terms of physical and visual features), deSubjectification (ignoring some people's perspectives), and passivization (thinking of people as passive participants in events). To study objectification, the study - in its discourse analytical orientation - qualitatively and quantitatively analyses a corpus of pornographic short stories (partly in comparison with a corpus of erotica). It concentrates on linguistic details supposed to contribute to the creation and maintenance of the four conceptualizations mentioned, e.g. the frequencies and lexical variation of lexemes for body parts (fragmentation) and of adjectival and nominal descriptors (physicalization and visualization), thematic elements (deSubjectification), or semantic role patterns in verbs for intercourse (passivization). The conclusion of the analyses is that pornography can be considered to objectify women in the sense of fragmenting, passivizing and physicalizing and visualizing them. Apart from passivization, the differences between women and men, however, are not extreme, suggesting that objectification extends to men, even though in a patriarchal culture, the discriminatory social effects will apply more severely to women than to men. As for deSubjectification, denying women their Subjectivity does not seem to be an essential component of pornography's objectification. The study does not only add a valuable perspective to the ongoing debate on the effects of pornography, but in combining the usually qualitatively-oriented views of Critical Discourse Analysis with the quantitative methods of corpus analysis it also takes an innovative methodological path, highlighting the great benefits but also the risks and limitations of such an approach. From the contents: Discussing Pornography: Why People are Arguing about Pornography - Researching Pornography: Sexology and Hermeneutics - Researching Pornography: Critical Discourse Analysis - Analysing Pornography: Concrete Features of the Analysis - Fragmentation - Physicalization and Visualization - DeSubjectification - Passivization - Conclusion