Reception in the Spanish press of the debate on terms of violence against women in their political-legal use (1999-2021): from linguistic correctness to gender ideology

Abstract

The terminological debate to name violence towards women begins with the spread of the designation of gender violence in the context of political initiatives opposed to discrimination against women and in the raising of awareness of a social problem that, up until then, had no visibility. This article analyses the designations found in political-legal discourse that are in opposition to this term (domestic violence, sexist violence, family/intra-family violence, violence on the grounds of sex) and which are communicated to the citizenry through the press. To show this, a corpus of journalistic texts from the DISMUPREN and METAPRES-COLING databases, published between 1999 and 2021, will be used. The objective is twofold: 1) to analyze the reception in the press of this terminological debate, placing it within Spain’s political context; and 2) to show how the press contributes to the repetition of the different ideologies that support the reasoning behind the use of these terms.