"Divorce Is a Sin": A Critical Discourse Analysis of Survivors Decisions to Remain in Abusive Relationships

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE:

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is a social justice and human rights issue. Nearly 35% of female-identified individuals have experienced intimate partner abuse. Often, public views are unsympathetic towards IPV survivors and assign blame to victims. One of the most enduringmisconceptions is that victims could “just leave” abusive relationships, and that victims that stay in their relationships are complicit in their abuse.

Janay Rice’s decision to stay with NFL player Ray Rice after a public incident of physical abuse, incited a national dialogue about IPV on Twitter called #WhyIStayed. New Hampshire Public Radio described the campaign as “the largest and most public discussion we’ve ever seen about domestic violence.” Positioning tweets as cultural artifacts, this study employs critical discourse analysis (CDA) methodology in order to investigate which dominant social scripts influenced tweeters understandings of and decisions to stay in their abusive relationships.

METHODS:

The data includesa random sample of #WhyIStayed tweets (n=3,000) from participants worldwide. Tweets were included: if they contained the #WhyIStayed and #WhyILeft hashtags, were composed in English, and were “tweeted” within the first thirty days of the campaign. Secondary retweets and commercially driven tweets were excluded.

The CDA methodology is meant to call attention to and investigate how language functions in ways to recapitulate dominant knowledge systems and distill how language enacts and reproduces larger systems of social inequality. The CDA was an inductive process where codes, themes, and discourses emerged organically. Primary and secondary codes were applied inductively. Similar constructs were grouped together into larger thematic categories. Based on these themes, structured questions were created to guide the understanding of the larger societal discourses.

RESULTS:

This analysis revealed four distinct societal-level discourses that influenced staying in abusive relationships: 1.) “Keeping families together is paramount;” 2.) “Love conquers all;” 3.) “Victims are white straight females with bruises;” and, 4.) “I didn’t think I was a victim.” Tweeters recounted social messaging regarding the importance of keeping the family together including the belief that divorce is a sin and children need fathers. Tweeters recalled social scripts regarding the importance of “working through relationship problems,” specifically for female-identified tweeters.  Finally, tweeters discussed how the preconceived societal definitions of abuse and victimhood challenged their own experiences with abuse, causing them to question whether they were being abused.

CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS

This analysis illustrates the privileging of a particular sets of norms and beliefs regarding IPV, the external pressure female-identified individuals feel to preserve their relationships, and the processes by which societal stereotypes permeate victim’s meaning-making processes regarding the abuse in their relationships. The overarching commonality of these tweets citing religious, familial, and societal expectations as reasons to remain in abusive relationships, displays the immense influence of dominant socio-cultural narratives. Primary prevention approaches should work towards countering these discourses by fostering environments that are intolerant of IPV and working towards challenging persistent misconceptions. Additional implications for practice will be discussed.