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.