Sociocultural implications in the use of the expression transsexual woman (trans) in journalistic discourse in Andalusia

Abstract

In this work, we focus on the study of the configuration of the social image of a social group that, despite the sociocultural advances of recent times, continues to be maintained, if not stigmatized, then marked by a part of society: the transsexual woman, or trans. The way the media present these women, and the established relationship between the ways of being named and the events with which these names are associated, contribute to this designation as ‘strange’ members of society.  

We analyze the structures under which transsexual women are designated in the Andalusian press and verify that the lexical choice and syntactic functioning of these produce a series of social effects that come to determine the image that is projected of these people and their own identity.  

The corpus used is made up of news, reports, and interviews that have appeared in newspapers, both in paper and digital format, at the regional and local level, as well as national newspapers, with a specific circulation in Andalusia.  

The theoretical framework in which the work is inserted is fundamentally Sociocultural Pragmatics, without forgetting aspects of Pragmatic Linguistics (Argumentation Theory), with approaches and assumptions of Critical Discourse Analysis.