Shades of hate:representations around homosexuality in Chilean church and parliamentary discourse (2005-2015)

Abstract

Drawing on corpus-based critical discourse studies that investigate out-group representations of sexual identities, this study identifies representations instantiated in three purpose-built corpora about gay people, homosexuality and LGBTQ+ laws produced between 2005 and 2015 in Chile. These are made up of 51,188 and 86,271 words of articles from the websites of Evangelical and Catholic churches, and a 231,467-word corpus of transcriptions of parliamentary debates. The methodological approach undertaken uses corpus tools to carry out a qualitative analysis of expanded concordance lines and incorporates aspects from Reisigl and Wodak’s (2016) Discourse Historical Approach (DHA), van Leeuwen’s (2008) framework for the analysis of legitimation, and Fairclough’s (1989) three-dimensional model for critical discourse analysis. These allow for the identification of representations and legitimation strategies, and the explanation of similarities and/or differences across the corpora considering contextual factors. In the analyses of the corpora, representations of gay people, homosexuality, gay marriage, same-sex relationships, and the different churches were identified. In the Evangelical Churches Corpus, the most overtly homophobic of the three corpora, representations negatively characterise gay people, homosexuality, and gay marriage, and positively portray the Evangelical churches in relation to their representations of these entities/phenomena. Similarly, the Catholic Church Corpus negatively represents homosexuality and same-sex relationships. The homophobic stance is expressed through more subtle and depersonalised ways, while positively representing the Catholic Church. Finally, the Parliamentary Debates Corpus represents gay people, homosexuality, the churches, and gay marriage in ways that foreground contesting arguments, covert homophobic stances, and the role of religion in politics. The contextual analysis carried out helps to provide explanations for the differences and similarities among the representations and the manner in which they are instantiated in the three corpora, considering discursive and social practices as well as the historical context. In this way, the thesis provides an account of the ways that language is employed strategically within a society that is undergoing great change.