Psychological violence using language: an exploratory research

Abstract

The linguistic and communicative violence is a form of psychological violence. What is(are) the limit(s)/difference(s) between “making fun” and promoting psychological violence through verbal language? Which words are used to procuring subjective disqualification of the subject and which violent contents are used to cause social effects that undermine the family and public life? These are questions to be highlighted. The focus of this paper was to examine some connections between language/communication and psychological violence through an exploratory qualitative research. Informants were psychology students from a public university aging between 20 and 30 years of both sexes. A questionnaire containing open questions of the analysis was applied: a) disqualifying and violent contents; (b) people who uttered the violent contents. In order to identify the core meanings, a thematic analysis was conducted as proposed by Minayo. The answers were reorganized into two axes according to the reviewed literature to the extent of hermeneutic possibilities. Thus, psychological violence through language was synthesized in: (I) subjectively disqualifying contents: referring to the informant, "stupid", for example, immediately indicates psychological violence; (II) socially violent contents, refer to contexts in which the subjects lived and to contexts frequently witnessed in conversations on the streets, the neighborhood, the university and on television: rape, racism, murder, assault, kidnapping and torture, for example. These translate multiple forms of violence: physical, institutional, public, moral, symbolic and psychological. However, it was observed among the results that the main verb forms connected to violence were related to sexual violence. Family was the greatest focus of violence regarding subjectively disqualifying contents.