Discourse analysis of women subjected to marital violence in morocco

Abstract

This dissertation aims at discovering the way Moroccan women subjected to marital violence legitimize their positions on TV and how they are seen by the general audience. This objective is guided by the assumption that the close relationship between media and the audience is complex and significant in the sense that the media constitute a platform where women seek to legitimize their position and delegitimize the position of the wrongdoers and a platform for Moroccans to express their attitudes and opinions about these women. In this project, we will adopt Faircloughs’ three dimensional model (Fairclough, 1989, 1992, 1995b), which relies on a text-discursive practice-context combination. To analyze media texts as narratives, we have had recourse to Labov (1972) six part structure of narratives as he provides a satisfactory account of how the latter act as social practice and how they constitute and represent reality. Of importance to us is the segment of evaluation because it gives us insights about how women think and how their discourse can be deciphered in the Moroccan cultural context. To know whether the women in the show have succeeded or failed to persuade the audience has compelled us to access Medi 1 TV website and YOUTUBE to quantify the different opinions expressed by commentators as a direct reaction to the show. We have classified the different comments according to whether they are positive and negative and also according to different themes (9 for and 6 against women). These themes have enabled us to analyze the comments within the framework of feminism by using concepts such as patriarchy, power relation, and stereotypes, and within the general Moroccan context that is characterized mainly by illiteracy and poverty.