Cyberstalking and Gender-Based Violence in Italy:a Speech Act Analysis

This article focuses on Gender-Based Violence and applied linguistics; it is an exploratory analysis of a dataset composed of three cyberstalking cases, filed under violation of Article 612bis of the Italian Criminal Code (Persecutory Acts) and with a recognition from the legal sector as to the veracity of the accusation. The analysis aims to describe how emotional abuse is carried out linguistically using Forensic Linguistics (FL). The methodology follows the Speech Act Theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969/1975) and builds on the study of Lorenzo-Dus et al. (2023). Firstly, the dataset was coded according to the SAT, i.e., type of speech act and whether direct or indirect. Then, the analysis focussed on how speech acts combine to carry out the abuse. Results show that even though individual preferences emerge, a general pattern can be found, e.g., an overwhelming presence of directive speech acts, followed by expressives, assertives, and commissives.