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University of Tennessee, Knoxville

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

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Not That Bad: Lessons Women Learn In A Rape Culture, Sydney J. Selman May 2021

Not That Bad: Lessons Women Learn In A Rape Culture, Sydney J. Selman

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

In 2018, Roxane Gay assembled an anthology that addresses the severity of rape culture, rejecting the common belief that some sexually violent acts, compared to others, are not that bad. This collection, titled Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture, compiles pieces from thirty different authors and sheds light on how the notion of not that bad contributes to a broader structural social problem involving sexual violence. This social problem, known as rape culture, is commonly defined as a culture that normalizes sexual violence and blames victims of sexual assault (“What is Rape Culture?”). In other words, rape …


Trends In Pejoration Of Female-Related Terms Of Abuse In English, Hannah Nelson Dec 2020

Trends In Pejoration Of Female-Related Terms Of Abuse In English, Hannah Nelson

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

It has been widely noted by linguistics that the process of pejoration, a specific type of semantic change, is very common in words specific to women. Words like bitch, cunt, harlot, and slut all have neutral origins and convoluted histories that even made some of these words specific to men. However, in modern English, these words are specifically terms of abuse towards women. Analysis of the ways in which these words have changed will help glean an understanding of trends in semantic pejoration of female-related terms of abuse in English. Two general trends are concluded, specifically the virgin/whore dichotomy and …