Rhetorics of resentment: A rhetorical critical discourse analysis of incel discourse on ekşi sözlük

This research employs rhetorical critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine incel (involuntary celibate) discourse on Ekşi Sözlük, exploring how gendered grievances are constructed within a non-Anglophone digital space. Drawing on a corpus of 250 entries (40,000 words) posted between January 2023 and January 2025, the research synthesizes Aristotelian rhetorical modes (ethos, pathos, logos) with critical discourse studies. Findings reveal that users establish ethos through narratives of victimhood, evoke pathos through dehumanizing language, and utilize pseudo-scientific logos to justify misogyny. While inspired by the global manosphere, Turkish incel discourse is uniquely shaped by domestic religious, nationalist, and anti-feminist trajectories. Hate speech is further legitimized through humor, intellectualization, and social critique afforded by the platform’s anonymity. By investigating these everyday communication practices in a Turkish context, this study fills a significant gap in non-Western digital gender studies and provides a context-sensitive framework for understanding the translatability of online misogyny.