Irony as a Zone of Confrontation between Different Voices/Voicings in Facebook Comments

Abstract

In this paper, we propose to analyze if, and how, irony serves as a zone of dialogue and tension among different voices/voicings presented as discourses of feminist resistance. To this end, our concept of language is based on discussions developed by the Bakhtin Circle on irony as a discursive strategy as well as considerations about what is known as the rape culture and myths related to it. Our corpus is comprised of anonymous, ironic comments made by women on Facebook posts, on spotted[1] pages. The results of the data analysis show that, through the appropriation of the discursive-myths related to the culture of rape, women introduced, in their utterances, zones of tension between messages, characterizing irony as women’s discourse of resistance against sexist discourse.

[1] Pages that customarily have anonymous posts.