“A Man is a Man and a Woman is a Woman”: Transphobia and Metonymy on X
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.64858/gaudeamus.v5.49Keywords:
cognitive linguistics, metonymy, critical discourse studies, corpus linguisticsAbstract
“A man is a man and a woman is a woman - that’s just common sense” stated Rishi Sunak during the 2023 Tory Party Conference (Leeson 2023). This statement caused a stir on X, where the far-right along with other groups supported Sunak and demonstrated that, despite other ideological differences, transphobia bound these reactionary movements (Kennedy 2022, 77), as illustrated by their shared use of certain widely spread metonymies. Following a combination of quantitative tools of corpus linguistics with the qualitative framework of critical discourse studies and cognitive linguistics, this case study examines, in a corpus of 798 posts, the metonymies used by X lay users in their representation of trans people; the relation between these metonymies and stereotypes surrounding this community, and their effect in the position on LGBTQ+ rights of X lay users. Within the sample of metonymies retrieved around the keyword “trans,” “property for person,” “person for property,” and “process for result” metonymies were the most common instances. These metonymies displayed a variety of effects, although they mostly served the purpose of dehumanizing and curtailing the existence of trans people.
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