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Fighting pride with prejudice : a critical discourse analysis of the Italian anti-gender discourse

Year: 2023
Type: dissertation
Abstract: In the context of the recent surge of the anti-gender movement, scholarship has analysed how actors involved in the public debate manage to create the threat of the so-called gender ideology and to persuade millions Europe-wide to object to non-traditional family forms, the extension of rights to marginalised communities, and values of equality. Taking two central voices of the Italian debate into account, this thesis sets out to investigate the rhetorical strategies used by the political right and the Catholic Church. In my discourse analysis, I explore linguistic devices and argumentation patterns, or topoi, with which actors advocate for the protection of children from what they label as gender theory. My aim is to question the logic and the rhetorical devices behind their statements when they oppose the need for the implementation of topics such as gender equality, sexual orientation, and gender identity in Italian classrooms. My results find that both actors resort to a variety of topoi, ranging well beyond the issue of gender-sensitive education. Oppression of dissent, curtailment of freedoms and rights, and the loss of traditional pillars of the Catholic worldview (e.g. the heteronormative family unit and the female/male dichotomy) are just some of the characteristics of what is presented as the menacing, self-fulfilling prophecy of the ‘gender theory’, whose victims are portrayed to be women and children. Relying on indirectness when expressing homo-bi-transphobic stances and on crude language when depicting the presumed consequences of the ‘ideology’, the actors manage to create an impression of immediate danger and to portray their own worldview as the supposedly safe and natural one.
Author: Moretti, Francesca
Language: English
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7000420824
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