Women victims and their place in the news

Women victims and their place in the news

Djatmika, Surakarta, Central Java

The celebration of Women's Day on Dec. 22 often ironically
reminds us that crimes against women occur daily in our country.
News stories about such crimes are readily found in local as well
as national newspapers, which report the abuses by exploiting
language to present how, when and where the crimes took place,
and who the actors as well as the victims are.

That women are the victims of crimes is common to us who live
in our patrilineal society, in which men hold the power over
women. A patriarchal society is a community having a sexist
system, with sexism being defined as a belief as well as a
practice which stresses the domination of man over woman.

All news stories are texts that are processed through the mind
of the writer. As such, these texts are subjective in the sense
that they are conditioned by the ideology of the language users
who construct the texts. In reporting the crimes, a reporter will
be influenced by situational context as well as the cultural
context in which she/he lives in, where and toward whom the
stories are being presented.

Accordingly, it can be stated that a news story about a crime
has two kinds of relationships, namely "internal" and "external".
The former is the relationship between/among the participants
within the text, in other words the relationship between/among
the people involved in the event/crime. The second kind of
relationship is between the writer of the story and the target
readers.

Looking at how language is used can help identify the ideology
of a daily or the ideology of a particular journalist. A news
story sometimes presents a crime "clearly" by naming the suspect
and the victim. However, at other times, the writer often reports
a crime by hiding who should be blamed and who should get the
sympathy.

To observe this phenomenon, especially to see the way language
is used to manipulate what really happened in such a way that
those involved in the crime have certain positions, several
approaches can be applied. Two of the approaches that can be used
to analyze news stories to see the positions of the participants
involved are naming and transitivity analysis.

Naming analysis can be a very effective tool for identifying
ideology. In other words, name selection in one text is very
effectively used in transferring information on the ideology of
the writer, because names have certain meaning. This kind of
analysis also accurately shows us a writer's ideology as well as
his/her position related to the matter being covered. Being
influenced by situational and cultural context, the writer's
selection for names in his/her text indicates his/her ideology
and position toward the text.

For example, in a news story about a prostitute, a writer may
describe the woman as a prostitute, a "purel", a damn whore or a
slut, depending on what ideology and position he/she has. In a
news story about a prostitute in Bahasa Indonesia, a writer may
describe the woman as a pelacur, or pekerja seks komersial, or
wanita tuna susila or kupu-kupu malam, depending on his/her
ideology.

Giving name also includes labeling certain participants as
well as some personal identities, such as age, address and
position in the crime. Furthermore, giving name also involves the
way the writer mentions those identities, whether she/he states
the identities clearly or she/he hides them by abstracting or
omitting.

The action of a crime, the doer or the actor of the action,
and the receiver or the goal of the action can demonstrate how a
journalist puts the participants involved in such a crime in
their positions. The information will be completed by the
elaboration on when, where, why as well as how the action of the
crime takes place.

The strategy is often wrapped in the exploitation of clause
construction such as in, "The husband chased and grabbed Lilis by
the arms." In the clause, the entity functioning as the actor is
"the husband", who does the action of chasing and grabbing the
receiver, or the goal, filled by "Lilis".

This short crime brief in The Jakarta Post shows the tendency
to attract the readers' sympathy to the woman victim.
Furthermore, the writer also positions the criminal as the person
to be blamed for the crime.

A strategy used by the writer to show his/her ideology is to
display the information of the personal identity of the criminal
more clearly than the identity of the woman victim. Moreover,
most of the "action" clauses are arranged by putting the criminal
as the actor and the woman victim in the "action receiver"
position.

Stories on rapes are composed to hide or to darken the
identity of the victims. This shows that indeed the writers are
on the victims side and they try to direct the readers' sympathy
to the victims.

Furthermore, they blame the criminals for the crime. The
strategy of language exploitation for such an ideology is
conducted by hiding the victims' personal information. The hiding
of the identities is performed by abbreviating names or giving
fake names.

Moreover, the writers don't mention the victims' address. To
support the naming selection, the writers also arrange the action
clauses in such a way that the criminals are put in the doer
position, whereas the victims are in the action receiver
position.

Several stories on purse snatching show the neutral position
of the writers, in that they don't blame the bandits and they
don't attract the readers' sympathy toward the woman victims. The
writers' neutrality is displayed by mentioning the identities of
the bandits as clearly as the identities of the woman victims.

This is supported by the action clauses construction. Most of
the clauses are arranged to have the criminals as the doer of the
snatching, but to empty the action receiver position or the put
someone else other than the victim in such a position.

In sum, the observation on several news texts shows that in
portraying and reporting crimes in which the victims are women,
journalists exploit names for the participants of the crimes as
well as action clause construction in such a way that readers
will know who the criminals and the victims really are and what
kind of position the have in the crime.

The reporters are probably influenced by the fact that the
society (where the reporters live in and where the daily is
targeted) is a sexist community. Or in other words, it can be
concluded that the way the reporters present the news stories
might indicate whether the society where they live is still a
sexist society or not.

The writer is a student in the doctoral program in descriptive
linguistics at Sebelas Maret University, Surakarta. He can be
reached at djatmika@uns.ac.id.