A Feminist Discourse Analysis of Writer's Gender Biases about Violence Against Women Journal of the College of Languages

The present study is concerned with the writer's ideologies towards violence against women. The study focuses on analyzing violence against women in English novel to see the extent the writers are being affected and influenced by their genders. It also focuses on showing to what extent the writer's ideologies are reflected in their works. Gender influences social groups ideologies; therefore, when a writer discusses an issue that concerns the other gender, they will be either subjective or objective depending on the degree of influence, i.e., gender has influenced their thoughts as well as behaviors. A single fact may be presented differently by different writers depending on the range of affectedness by ideologies. The study aims to uncover the hidden gender-based ideologies by analyzing the discursive structure of a novel based on Van Dijk's model (2000) of ideology and racism. The selected novel is based on discussing violence against women. The study will later on reveal the real writer’s gender-based ideologies and whether the writer is a feminist or an anti-feminist? Or Is he prejudiced? Or Is he biased?


Introduction
Discourse analysis (DA) has become an influential academic method in conducting studies that are related to analyzing ideologies, their power as well as political events in societies. Languages are man-made and shaped; therefore, languages exhibit biases, flaws, prejudices, racist ideologies etc. that means languages are subject to ideological biases like any other social institution. Discourse analysis is considered an effective method for revealing biases, prejudices, ideologies as well as manipulations in languages; therefore, DA has been developed as an analytical approach in addition to investigating the relationship between discourse (spoken and written) and society, ideology, culture, power and even politics. Discourse analysis operates on both levels of analysis: macro or micro, i.e., it studies both society as a whole at a larger scale, as well as the smaller scale that accounts for individuals' interactions with societies.
Another approach and discipline make use of linguistic methods and has become interdisciplinary fields seeking to fulfil their aims such as feminist activists in linguistics. The approach that has been developed by the collaboration the between feminism and linguistic discourse analysis is called Feminist Discourse Analysis. FDA addresses social problems concerning women such as violence against women, discrimination, disadvantage etc.
that are maintained through language as well as language use. The purpose behind such feminist studies is that languages are powerful if they are used accurately and correctly; that is why linguistic studies may indicate radical changes in societies by raising public awareness towards such problems. The feminist approach to discourse analysis is about how discourse analysis can go alongside with feminist goals, i.e., feminist linguists present feminist problems through language and language use relying on linguistic theories.
Such method can be defined as the theory that combines feminist ideologies and analytical discursive methodologies. For Lazar (2005), feminist activists in different fields of sciences adopt feminist ideologies to raise people's awareness around the globe. Gender based discrimination and violence are considered violation of human rights (p.1-5). Clinton ,in the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women which was held in Beijing, China (2005), said that "it is no longer acceptable to discuss women rights as separate from human rights" ( cited in Bressler, 2011, p. 143-147). Patriarchal and male dominance ideologies in linguistics are challenged by feminist discourse analysis. Most of the feminist activists reject those ideologies for influencing violence against women and criticize social support for those ideologies.
Ideologies exist in all types of discourse, i.e., discourse is never empty or free from ideologies. They can be expressed either explicitly or implicitly; that is one can never say ideologies do not exist in a certain discourse for they may implicitly conveyed. They can be discovered by intensive as well as comprehensive reading, and by following a methodological and systematic way of analysis. Ideologies can be either positive or negative and can be expressed either subjectively or objectively, despite the fact that social problems should be expressed objectively ( Fairclough, 1995, p.70-72).

Feminism and CDA
The label "feminist" has been introduced in several fields and subfields of linguistics such as discourse, pragmatics, stylistics…etc.; it has attracted the attention of feminist activists as well as scholars who are interested in feminist issues. The need for feminist perspective is to maintain equality as rejecting male dominance and seek justice for females. Feminism has Joined CDA for the latter is very well known as being concerned with social problems such as violence, inequality, prejudice…etc. The objective of feminist studies is to achieve and maintain objectivity and neutrality in discourses ; many feminists have worked under the umbrella of CDA without using directly the label "feminist". However, there are three reasons for using the explicit label feminist and these reasons are: the first reason is, these feminists want to discuss feminist problems such as violence against women, discrimination, abuse, inequality directly and make a difference in the status quo of females rather than discussing discourse and gender in general; the second reason is denying the credits of female writers in citing their works; and the third reason is consequences of not identifying themselves as feminist will cause them the "absence of self-naming" (Lazar, 2005,p.1-6).

Feminist Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis (FPDA)
Poststructuralism has immensely contributed to the development of gender studies. Chris Weedon (1987) has presented the feminist poststructuralist discourse analysis theory analysis; for her languages is the mean that " enables us to think, speak and give meaning to the world around us." ; her approach (FPDA) regards language as a social practice where individuals construct their social identities with its use. Poststructuralism provide her with conceptualizations of subjects that help her widening the horizon of her feminist studies. For her subjectivity is vulnerable to change, for it depends on how subjects identity themselves with respect to language, consciousness and social institutions. In other words, subjects make their position in a discourse that enable them to negotiate their identities with respect to their position in a discourse (p.32) .
Judith Baxter (2003 ) has developed Weedon's theory of FPDA, where she has brought the highly theorized methods of post structuralism, and combined them with fields of feminism in studying spoken intersections in classrooms (p.11-13). That is her method intends to operate in social institutions. FPDA has two dimensions: feminist dimension that includes gender and power relations which is mainly based on Foucault's views , and the poststructuralist dimension that includes poststructuralist's theories and conceptualizations.

Power
Power is one of the most prominent and dominant concepts in discourse analysis as well as feminist studies. It is a controversial term especially when it comes to discuss its legitimacy. It can be both legitimate and illegitimate, for power does not necessarily mean oppression. In military institutions power is required and it is regarded as a legitimate form of power, but when power is accompanied with domination, coercion, and oppression for fulfilling individuals desires, this type is illegal. However, in conducting any feminist study, power relations need to be focused on for being crucially important in revealing social structure as well as discourse. Power studies show how relations are being exercised by males and how women are subjugated and oppressed by male-violence. Karlberg (2005) argues that power is shaped by individuals' relations through social practices and discourse. These social practices influence mentality which will affect beliefs and speech as well and of course all these will be reflected in individuals' actions in a society. These actions may be associated with power and it is either positive or negative (p.10).
Power for Foucault is social relations: the hierarchical coordination of relations. Inequality characterises power relations since it starts from above to below: from power to powerless. Power is negative for it exploits, oppress and subjugate people. There is also a movement in the opposite direction since there has been power there is resistance. Resistance is the condition for power to exist. Max Weber (1978) defines it as the "probability that one actor within social relationship will be in a position to carry out his/her own will despite resistance …" (p.53).
Feminist discourse analysis emerged at the beginning to study gender interaction as well as patriarchal effects on discourse, but later on it widened its horizon to include power critique ; that is investigating "language of power" , "the power of language" as well as power relations in societies (Tilley, 2007,1). Feminist has criticised the normalised power as well as discrimination, domination and physical power.

Socio-cognitive Ideologies
Ideologies are socially shared representations that social groups and members share in societies. Meriel Bloor and Thomas Bloor (2007) defines ideologies as "a set of beliefs or attitudes shared by members of particular social group"(p.10) .
These ideologies are unconsciously acquired through direct interaction and exposure to social and cultural practices and not innate. Despite the fact that these ideologies are group-level shared, they tend to be idiosyncratic; that is, these ideologies are variable from one individual to another but the personal version is close to the version used by group members. This variation depends on individual's experience, history, and knowledge. Thus, the theory of ideology should "account for differences, variation, contradiction, and dissidence". Therefore, analysts need to know how social representations are formed and used in discourse as well as in social practices (Van Dijk, 1998,p.78).
Discourse analysts need to be vigilant about the sort of discourse and environment in which the discourse is produced since it has been ideologically-based. Though these ideologies are unconsciously held and deeply rooted in individuals thoughts, they can be conveyed by language use and language patterns ( Bloor &Bloor,2007:10). Van Dijk (1998,p. 78) compares ideology to knowledge, beliefs and attitudes. For Meriel Bloor and Thomas Bloor (2007,p.10) ideologies are unconsciously held whereas knowledge, beliefs and attitudes are consciously held. Ideologies are imbedded and reflected in individual's attitudes and behaviours. Ideologies are unconscious and sometimes covered by language use for beautifying them , such as calling wars as "peacekeeping". Therefore, cognitive models are important in investigating hidden ideologies that motivate social interactions. Thus, the cognitive models adopted by most analysts are "frame" model that is regarded as the mental construction, that shapes the way of viewing the world and how it is activated by language use. Frame forms part of the unconsciousness that is automatically operated for helping individuals making sense of the world they live in. Framing plays a crucial role in CDA as presenting cultural messages and make everything logical, normal, and accepted by group members. Frames are just like ideologies by being variable and not limited to one culture. They are possessed by individuals in a way that help them to cope and participate in social practices as normalizing human behaviours depending on general ideologies of the society individuals live in; they are also inbuilt in individuals' minds for facilitating communicative events between individuals of the same group and making difficult communicative events with other group members (Bloor & Bloor, 2007).
More than one discipline are required to analyse ideologies, but the most important disciplines are: Discourse, Cognition and Society. Discourse involves language use, text, talk, communicative events and anything that can be included under the term discourse. Cognition involves the mental aspect of ideologies like individuals' ideas and beliefs, and how they are related to social representation of everyday life. Mental and cognitive aspects are required to present an appropriate analysis of ideologies. While society involves everything that has to do with group resistance and dominance as well as social, political and cultural events. Ideologies are related to everyday social practices; therefore, it is difficult to discuss them without considering society ( Van Dijk ,2014, p. 9).

Identity
Identity is the "self" that individuals construct socially throughout their interactions with others; in other words, identity is a social construction that enables people to participate in social actions smoothly (Paltridge, 2006, p. 42). This notion of "identity" has become to replace what is termed "character"; that is identity is invented and constructed socially whereas character shows contributions of individuals that are fixed and permanent (Turner, 2006, p. 277). Identity is considered "temporary" and "unstable" where these two characteristics provoke "anxiety" (Wiggins, 2019, p.116).
This "unstablity" and "temporality" may be due to the constant process of construction and reconstruction of identity in interaction ( Paltridge, 2006, p.39). An individual may have several identities, that is; a woman can have her own identity as a woman beside other ones like her identity as a mother, daughter, wife, worker, employee etc. Polariaztion of dichotomies can be perceived within identities such as polariaztion between men/women where the existence of one category requires the existence of the other (Wiggins, 2019, p.116).

Gendered identity
Gender Identity refers to the way individuals identify themselves whether a male or a female and their sense of belonging that to which category they belong to. Gendered Identity is one of the subcategories of identity besides National identity, Racial and ethnic identity, and class identity (Paltridge,2006, p. 38-44). People acquire their gendered identity by being exposed to social attitudes, practices and behaviours where gendered identities are apparently expressed (Turner,2006, p. 233). The concept of performativity in both genders controls individuals ideological practices, whereas in identity, gender is embedded or addressed by social structural features. (Wiggins,2019, p.117).
Feminists distinguish between the two controversial terms which are gender and sex. Gender is based on social and cultural differences between males and females; it refers to the roles played by individuals in society, and these roles are changeable depending on the social and economic status.
Whereas sex refers to the anatomical aspect denoting the biological differences between males and females which are static criteria ( & ‫محمود‬

71-6172 : ‫.)طنطاوي‬
Gender has become an interdisciplinary field interacting with so many fields such as linguistics, sociology, anthropology, social psychology etc. It was introduced into linguistics in 1975 when three books were published:

Robin Lakoff published her work Language and Women's Place , Mary
Ritchie's Male/female language and Barrie Thorne and Nancy Henley's Language and Sex :Difference and Dominance. Gender studies at the very beginning tended to present the differences between male/female communication, their language construction and their interaction but mentioned nothing concerning the feminist problems of male dominance as a whole in society (Kendall & Tannen,2003, p.548). According to Rahimi and Sahragard (2008, p.12 ), the analysis of language critically involves analyzing its own ideologies that's why ideology has become the dominant concept in CDA.

Prejudiced Discourse
Prejudice is the unfair and unreasonable beliefs and judgments that are shaped without knowledge, as confirming information against a social group.
Prejudice, like ideologies, are both social and cognitive. Discourses exhibit prejudices that include feelings of hatred and dislike in addition to the beliefs and judgements.
Language can maintain prejudices, ideologies and even power that can be regulated through language use. Baugh (2000) states that languages bear prejudices and preferences as positive or negative; therefore, analysing languages can reveal prejudiced ideologies (p.82).
Prejudice creates stereotypes where many phenomena such as racism, discrimination, sexism are based on it ( Bloor and Bloor, 2007, p.128).
Therefore they may be regarded as "problematic" for they negatively affect human behaviours, and their discriminatory beliefs against other social groups. Prejudiced ideologies, stereotypes as well as discrimination may lead to violence, nevertheless, they have great deal of influence; the range of influence varies among people, they may influence their profession choice (Zhang, Schmader, & Forbes, 2009); influence career experiences (Fiske and Lee 2008:13-52 ); influence people's academic performance (Shapiro & Neuberg, 2007, p.30-107) and even influence wage and salaries (Bloor & Bloor, 2007;Jackson, 2011;Wood & Eagly, 2010).

Gender Stereotype
Stereotype is defined by the European commission (2009,  Gendered stereotypes basically generate from the direct as well as the indirect observation of both roles and functions of males and females in a society. Children, based on their observations, are able to know their group in addition to the roles and functions assigned to their group. They will be influenced by their gender, the social beliefs concerning their gender as well as the other gender (Eagly, Natar, Miller, Kaufmann & Sczesny ,2019); that is once they know to which group they belong, they will know the typical characters of both groups. This observation will form the cultural and social beliefs which will contribute in shaping the ideologies of the members of the society. Wood, Christensen, Hebl & Rothgerber (1997, p.523-535) state that these stereotypes are activated when both men and women accept the internalized conceptualization of their gender, as well as role. Brannon (2000) states gender stereotypes seems to be related to a great extent to gender roles. For him, gender stereotypes influence gender roles, behaviours as well as specifications. Therefore, most societies tend to categorize both gender leading to discrimination and even violence. These actions are driven by ideologies shaped by social as well as cultural beliefs that is stereotypes. The categories of gender stereotypes and gender roles form a precise representation of individuals conceptions of the world (p.167).
Feminism; as a movement, has been assigned negative characteristics; most men believe that feminism is anti-men movement or men-hating movement without knowing the essence of feminism. This negative stereotype has been the result of the prejudiced beliefs as well as the negative generalizations concerning women and feminism.

Model of Analysis
The model to be followed is Van Dijk's model of ideology and racism (2000). This model has number of categories where each category explores deeply whether or not the authors/speakers are biased and prejudiced against the other gender. These categories belong to different levels of analysis syntax, discourse, pragmatics, semantic and politics. Models that are intended to analyse ideologies, racism or prejudices rely on the binary representation of self and others. The research will not include all categories. Only those categories that serve well the purpose of the study. Categories that serve the micro level of analysis shall not be included, only those categories that operate on the macro levels shall be included.

Polarization
This category is considered the essence of Van Dijk's model (2000). It accounts for positive self-representation and negative other-presentation. In detecting author/speakers' racist or sexist ideologies, Van Dijk takes into consideration how these speakers and authors emphasize their good qualities and behaviours, and deemphasize their bad qualities as well as behaviours.

Social Actors
Since all types of discourse are on people and how they act, therefore actors' descriptions reveal a great account of writers/speakers ideologies. Actors may be described as individuals or as members of group and hence representing the group as whole. Description may implicate prejudices as well as negative opinions concerning other groups. This category is closely related to categories of victimization and legality.
"The ones mat weren't perverts were either thick or board or women. That was the only good thing about the women teachers; they didn't mess around with you" (P.44).
Most men, she has met through our her study were "pervert" has no respect for women. This type of society, Doyle criticizes. Sometimes authors' ideologies become obvious throughout describing social actors, but Doyle rarely describes individuals' personalities. He sometimes comments on appearances just for the sake of constructing an image in the readers' minds.
Doyle put emphasize on actions and let them speak for the character. No one has excess into social actors' mind and know what they believe in but the fact is that beliefs are translated unconsciously into actions.

Victimization
Most relations are organized in binary way. Victimization is closely related to polarization; that is how the ingroup are represented as being victims of the other group. Feminist writers will concern themselves in showing women as being victims of the other group. However, this category will serve the purpose of this study very well, for it will discover whether writers are being affected and influenced by their genders in presenting violence against women, and who is really the victims of such actions.
In Doyle's novel "The Woman Who Walked into Doors " the out-group is considered the victims of the in-group. The author is not biased to his own gender and he is not very subjective. His ideologies are neither motivated by social ideologies nor by his gender. Women are being shown as being victims of their patriarchal societies, and the deeply rooted ideologies that motivate violent actions. Violence against women is not only practised by men, since women can act violently towards another woman. Women who are influenced by a male character will support patriarchal system of society. Ignoring abused women will add to their suffering. Paula is ignored by her family, society and the hospital staff.

Empathy
A racist author or speaker will present the ingroup as victims of a certain threat by other group. It is closely related to another category called "HUMANITARIANISM" ; that is sticking to human rights and no matter what. It is really humane to discuss problems like violence without any reservations and concerns regarding the ingroup.
Doyle discusses violence and asks societies as well as families to have empathy with suffering women. Families should sympathize with their daughters, for equality and justice start from home. Doyle throughout his novel defends human rights and criticizes Patriarchal systems that encourages violence against women. Doyle condemns the social action practised against women considering them as illegal , in addition to the illegal consequences like murder, drug addiction etc. What has been mentioned previously can be included under the "illegality" category. This ensures that Doyle does not support violence against women though he is a man.

Euphemism
Mitigation is one of the most well-known semantic devices that can be employed very well to serve this category of euphemism. Within the broader framework of this strategy is the strategy of positive self-presentation that is accompanied with the avoidance of negative other presentation.
Doyle's works are well known for not relying heavily on descriptions as well as relying on conversations between interlocutors and their actions. He let his characters speak for themselves. He shapes his characters in a way that presents how dense and varied society, of different cultures, different classes, different beliefs etc. that play a crucial role in constructing a unique character for each individual. Creating collective characters to present social groups, as well as their ideologies, serve better in presenting such topics. His gender has neither influenced his judgement nor he encouraged violence. He defends the outgroup as well as he presents them positively. However he accounts for personal variations that are shaped culturally depending on social environment. Negative opinions on females are avoided; that is the out-group has not been presented negatively.

Explanation and Reasonableness
One of the characteristics of anti-racist discourse is "Empathetic", where writers explain their attitudes towards acts they consider as illegal. Racist orators tend to present the negative acts of ingroup "away" from their ingroup, whereas negative acts of out group is explained as being inherent qualities of the whole group . This is called in social psychology as "Ultimate Attribution Error".
Reasonableness accounts for how orators "sound" in terms of rationality. This category is going to be employed in this study, as whether the authors have been rational in explaining violence against women, or they have been somehow biased. Such category is of value especially when the topic is controversial and implying biases with irrational judgements made by orators.
Doyle's knowledge of women's psychology has helped in understanding what a female character might think of, and how she is going to act. Most women tend to explain and find reasons to understand what is happening. It's like a psychological defence mechanism that helps them to survive this violence.
Doyle presents his ingroup as variant in their behaviours, that has made people believe that he is somehow biased for presenting the negative acts of ingroup as individual-specific. For the researcher, Doyle is not biased because violence is not an inherent property of men. This shows Doyle is not biased as well as being reasonable and rational novelist.

Generalization
Within generalization, the basis is polarization; racist orators tend to generalize negative qualities on outgroup members. Concrete actions have done group of people being abstracted and generalized as being an inherent quality of the whole members of group. This is perhaps may be considered the mean through which discourse can signal a cognitive relationship between concrete examples and mental models as well as general attitudes, opinions, ideologies.
Most social events are driven by both mental as well as cognitive models.
Discourse analysis illustrates the relation between cognitive, mental models, and concrete actions. Ideologies are deeply contextualized with the unconsciousness of human mind, and motivate human behaviours, attitudes and actions. Ideologies are constructed unconsciously by social interaction thus they may be found in group members of society; their concrete actions are motivated by racist ideologies would be generalized in a society. The author presents Paula's brothers who seems to be very affected by their father.
Thus , ideologies can be said to vary according to the environment that the individual lives in, and the social actors whom he interacts with. Doyle has not generalized a negative opinion on the outgroup members which pinpoints that his mental models as being constructed in an environment support feminism and feminist problems such as violence against women.

Authority
For Van Dijk (1998), speakers and writers make reference to organizations in their arguments to support their cases as in the cases of political speeches and arguments. This category is employed in a different sense; that is this category will be employed as a means of criticizing social institutions for ignoring women's problems such as violence. Institutions inherently exhibit social ideologies, mainly these institutions that are under control of maledefined rules. This category will show to what extent writers are objective; for a male writer to criticize male-defined institutions for not offering help for women experienced domestic or any type of violence, is considered to a great extent to be evidential and objective.
Doyle's work is also intended to criticize the governmental institutions in charge of such cases for ignoring women. Most social actors find it difficult to stand against the patriarchal beliefs, and that it is the easiest way to deliberately overlook what is going on. For this reason the author overlooks presenting anything concerning authority as well as social care institutions.
Societies in addition to social actors act as if women like Paula do not exist.

Conclusion
The purpose of this study is to uncover writers' gender-based ideologies, i.e., to what extent gender based ideologies vary depending on the writers genders, and whether gender can determine being a feminist or anti-feminist.
The study shows that feminism has nothing to do with gender rather it has to do with the beliefs of individuals. The selection of novels has been on the basis that both authors deal with violence against women and they are both of different genders. The study reveals after reading many novels tackling violence against women no author has encouraged violence. Both genders condemn such actions but there are instances that both genders do agree on.
Based on that, one can encounter women as anti-feminists not only men.
Victorian female novelists who were influenced by male figures are antifeminists, they believe in the patriarchal society, i.e., they believe in patriarchy but do not support violence and encourage such acts.
To tackle such a topic does not necessarily require a feminist activist or a woman. Feminism is not unique and gender-specific ideology rather it is universal. Ideologies that discriminate women, terrorise and abuse them are there in every society. The existence of such ideologies requires the existence of the opposite ideologies. Throughout reading both novels, it has become very clear to be a feminist does not necessarily mean that you have to be a woman, on the contrary, feminism has male activists. Authors as well can be feminist or anti-feminist, they agree with some goals and values of feminism and disagree with others. But when it comes to violence, most men will disagree with it for it is against human rights. Thus both Doyle and Quindlin believe that violence is not acceptable morally as well as lawfully. And that both of them believe in the variety of people as well as their ideologies.
Van Dijk's model of ideology and racism has played an important role to uncover ideological properties; whether the author's gender can affect his opinion concerning violence. This model has been mainly intended to uncover racist ideologies in political speeches such as racist beliefs and immigrants. But the number of categories can function in uncovering biased genderism. This model can offer a great deal of help in revealing authors ideologies in literary works such as poems, novels and any other literary genre. The study has shown that linguistic models can be used in revealing ideologies that lie under literary genres the same way as non-literary genres.
The selected categories contribution is to show polarization as positive presentation of self and negative presentation of others; therefore, these categories can reveal writers' biases and prejudices Feminist ideologies are variable and not limited to one gender only as both males and females can be feminist or can be anti-feminist; i.e., male writers can be feminist and female writers can be anti-feminist depending on the social impact on their mentality. Feminist ideologies do not rely on gender itself rather than on the ideologies of the person himself. Jane Austin has been one of the greatest feminist novelists who was famous of her feminist views, but she has not attacked the other gender. She has tried to portray what the ideal male character should be in her novels that is why characters like Mr.