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 |
|---|---|
| Number of pages | 20 |
| Journal | Discourse and Society |
| Early online date | 24 Jul 2025 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 24 Jul 2025 |
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