“Caught in the glare of ageism and misogyny”

Abstract This article investigates the discursive construction of gendered ageism in Instagram user-generated comments responding to Madonna’s public denunciation of ageism and misogyny. Applying mainstream models of impoliteness ( Culpeper 2011 , 2016 ) and conceptualisations of violence against women facilitated by digital technology ( Esposito and Zollo 2021 ), the study analyses a corpus of 1,930 English-language comments using a mixed-methods, discursive-pragmatic approach. The findings reveal that Madonna is pathologised through routinised forms of body shaming, gender stereotyping, and moral degradation. Pathologisation mediates between micro-level discursive actions and macro-level ideological formations: body shaming, pseudo-diagnostic insults, condescending questions, disgust emojis, and intensified textese are the pragmatic means through which gendered ageism is normalised. The root of this misogynistic abuse seems to be ageist and sexist sociocultural beliefs, which are manifested through specific discursive actions. By foregrounding the discursive realisation of gendered ageism, this study advances discursive-pragmatic research on digital violence against women.