Transphobic language practices in cyberspace: pragmatic perspectives on linguistic violence

Abstract

This article discusses digitally mediated linguistic practices engaged in the production of linguistic violence against transsexual, transvestites and transgender people. For this, in line with perspectives of the new Linguistic Pragmatics, especially the recent developments about speech acts, we highlight the particular violent character that some of them may assume as a pragmatic effect produced by the indexical nature of language. In addition, we highlight the specificities of the linguistic practices carried out in cyberspace, related to the semiotic potential of violence in this context. Thus, applying the theoretical discussions undertaken, in the light of a qualitative and interpretative methodology, we analyze two online comments posted by readers of the G1 news page, in matters related to the 19th LGBT Pride Parade in São Paulo, Brazil, in 2015. Finally, we observe the productivity of the pragmatic perspective on language in the understanding of online practices in which it is used with a view to violating people contextually positioned in places subordinated in terms of gender such as trans people and other social markers of difference.