Violence verbale dans le discours des mouvements antagonistes : le cas de ‘Mariage pour tous’ et ‘Manif pour tous’

Abstract

In France, the vote for the Mariage pour tous law (Marriage for Everyone, i.e., same-sex marriage) has allowed for the Manif pour tous (Protest for Everyone) movement to emerge. This movement continues to exist as a collective action movement seeking to exert normative pressure on the social representations of gender and family identities. We are interested here in the forms and functions of verbal violence within this social activity, as well as in the process of attributing other meanings to opponents’ discourses. The article explores the modalities by which values, spaces, and speeches create a dichotomous opposition system. Whereas Manif pour tous discourse focuses on a selection of words in order to control their meanings, it opponents’ counter-discourses use a creative, anti-normative discourse which aims at paving a way for new meanings.

Keywords

• gender studies
• political discourse analysis
• rediscursivisation
• stereotypes
• verbal violence