'The ultimate violation’: a linguistic taxonomy for rape euphemisms in courtroom discourse

Sophie Hoerl; Nicci MacLeod

doi:10.1177/09579265251339500

'The ultimate violation’: a linguistic taxonomy for rape euphemisms in courtroom discourse

Sophie Hoerl
, Nicci MacLeod^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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Abstract

This paper presents a new taxonomy for classifying rape euphemisms and demonstrates its application through a study that systematically analysed closing arguments in four rape trials. In the study, all references to the rape in question were classified into four categories: 1) euphemistic, neutral, 2) euphemistic, sexual, 3) euphemistic, violent and 4) orthophemistic, violent. The findings showed that closing arguments contain many euphemistic references to rape, despite the fact that unambiguous, direct language is preferable in courtroom discourse. Furthermore, the following themes emerged in the lawyers’ euphemistic language: 1) rape testimony framed as a narrative, 2) sexual connotations in official legal charges, 3) highlighting the victim’s perspective and 4) conflating rape and sex. The study highlighted a need for sensitising the language of closing arguments to prevent retraumatising the rape victims and demonstrates how the proposed taxonomy can support future research on rape euphemisms and potentially other ‘taboo’ dicourse contexts.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	89-108
Number of pages	20
Journal	Discourse and Society
Volume	37
Issue number	1
Early online date	24 Jul 2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265251339500
Publication status	Published - Jan 2026

Bibliographical note

Copyright © The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

Data Access Statement

Trial transcripts, including those used in this article, can be found through the Minnesota Court Records via https://publicaccess.courts.state.mn.us/CaseSearch (accessible from the US and the UK).
The anonymised data collected for this article, can be found on the Aston Institutes Forensic Linguistic Databank FoLD: https://fold.aston.ac.uk/handle/123456789/44

Keywords

COURTOOM DISCOURSE, EUPHEMISMS, ORTHOPHEMISMS, RAPE TRIALS, TAXONOMY, FEMINIST CORPUS ASSISTED DISCOURSE STUDIES

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10.1177/09579265251339500

horl-macleod-2025-the-ultimate-violation-a-linguistic-taxonomy-for-rape-euphemisms-in-courtroom-discourse
Copyright © The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Final published version, 287 KBLicence: CC BY 4.0

Cite this

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abstract = "This paper presents a new taxonomy for classifying rape euphemisms and demonstrates its application through a study that systematically analysed closing arguments in four rape trials. In the study, all references to the rape in question were classified into four categories: 1) euphemistic, neutral, 2) euphemistic, sexual, 3) euphemistic, violent and 4) orthophemistic, violent. The findings showed that closing arguments contain many euphemistic references to rape, despite the fact that unambiguous, direct language is preferable in courtroom discourse. Furthermore, the following themes emerged in the lawyers{\textquoteright} euphemistic language: 1) rape testimony framed as a narrative, 2) sexual connotations in official legal charges, 3) highlighting the victim{\textquoteright}s perspective and 4) conflating rape and sex. The study highlighted a need for sensitising the language of closing arguments to prevent retraumatising the rape victims and demonstrates how the proposed taxonomy can support future research on rape euphemisms and potentially other {\textquoteleft}taboo{\textquoteright} dicourse contexts.",

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'The ultimate violation’: a linguistic taxonomy for rape euphemisms in courtroom discourse

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Data Access Statement

Keywords

Access to Document

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