The representation of sex work in the Greek Press
What is it about?
The representation of sex work in the media has received little to no attention in the field of linguistics and discourse analysis. Given that news discourse can have a huge impact on public opinions, ideologies and norms, and the setting of political agendas and policies (van Dijk 1989), the study adopts a Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis (CACDA) approach (Baker, Gabrielatos, KhosraviNik, Krzyżanowski, McEnery & Wodak 2008), seeking to explore whether journalists reproduce or challenge negative stereotypes vis-à-vis sex work. Examining 82 articles published in three Greek newspapers (Kathimerini, TA NEA, Efimerida ton Syntakton) in 2017, this paper considers the lexico-grammatical choices that are typically involved in the representation of sex work and sex workers in the Press. Drawing on Systemic Functional Linguistics, the Discourse Historical Approach and corpus linguistics, the analysis links the textual findings (micro-level context) with the discourse practice context (meso-context) as well as the social context in which sex work occurs (macro-context). Findings illustrate that: 1. although sex work in Greece has been legalised for about two decades, traces of abolitionist discourses can be found in the Press, building barriers in the emancipatory efforts of sex workers who stand up for having equal civil and labour rights as their fellow citizens; 2. the political line of each of the newspapers analysed greatly affects the representation of sex work(ers), with the left-wing newspaper having the least biased representations and the right-wing newspapers the most negative ones; 3. the lexicogrammatical choices involved in the media representations of sex work (re-)produce negative stereotypes vis-à-vis sex work(ers); 4. negative stereotyping in sex work builds on four key themes: (a) feminisation; i.e. the assumption that sex workers are women only and clients only men; (b) victimisation; i.e. the representation of sex workers as victims; (c) problematisation; i.e. the construction of sex work as a problem by means of associating it with other social problems and (d) foreignisation, i.e. highlighting sex workers’ different descent.