Citation

Trinch SL. Text 2001; 21(4): 567-610.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2001, Walter de Gruyter)

DOI

10.1515/text.2001.012

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This article provides a systematic analysis of the lexical variation surrounding the topic of sexual violence used by Latina women in a legal setting where they tell their stories of domestic abuse in order to make an official report. Twenty-two-protective order interviews in which Latina women co-construct their accounts of abuse with paralegal or volunteer interviewers make up the corpus of the study. By bringing to light the different lexical items used to discuss sexual violence, I suggest that cultural ways of speaking (where norms for discourse about this topic are arguably quite consistent cross-culturally) about taboo topics can be at odds with institutional needs. Utilizing anthropological and linguistic theories of sociocultural taboos as well as an interactional sociolinguistic approach to frame the analysis, I determine that Latina women have an array of linguistic resources with which to speak about sexual assault. However, in some instances, the victims' use of ambiguous and vague terms to refer to sexual violence, a taboo subject, though perhaps a culturally appropriate strategy for storytelling, puts the accuracy of an institutional record at risk.

Keywords: taboo; sexuality; genre; narrative; domestic violence; rape; Latino; community.