Deconstructing Accounts of Intimate Partner Violence

Doing Interviews, Identities, and Neoliberalism

Bibliographic Data

ID22870599
AuthorsDebra Langan (Wilfrid Laurier University, corresponding author), Stacey Hannem (0000-0003-4115-1027, Wilfrid Laurier University), Catherine Stewart (0000-0002-7204-7356, Wilfrid Laurier University)
Year2016
Volume37
Issue2
Pages219-238
Publication date2016-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueApplied Linguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0142-6001 • E-ISSN: 1477-450X
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/applin/amu019
OpenAlexW2118117777
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited73

This article engages in a reflexive, critical, analysis, re-examining data from an earlier project that used qualitative interviewing to investigate the experiences of women who came into contact with police because of situations of ‘verbal abuse’. In the present article, we use discursive psychology to explore how the women navigated narratives of abuse during the interviews; the ideological influences at play; and constructions of identity. During the interviews, the women worked to construct favourable social identities, by drawing on institutional discourse, direct, and indirect speech. Their narratives revealed the influence of neoliberal ideologies and practices on their understandings of intimate partner violence and their victim identities. While they were committed to a neoliberal worldview that emphasized individualism, they simultaneously recognized the need for police intervention. These contradictory ideological investments were reflected in the women’s fluctuating identity constructions as disempowered/empowered victim, and victim/perpetrator. We argue that such competing investments, for these women and the broader public, create ideological dilemmas which inhibit collective action towards social change.

Aesthetics · Criminology · Critical discourse analysis · Discourse analysis · Discursive psychology · Identity (music) · Ideology · Individualism · Narrative · Neoliberalism (international relations) · Political science · Politics · Reflexivity · Social constructionism · Social science · Sociology · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Intimate Partner and Family Violence · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology

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