Analysing the discursive strategies in the narratives of victims of an Egyptian sex predator: a corpus-assisted Discourse Historical approach

Abstract

Stories about a young man raping and sexually harassing a hundred women and minor girls flooded Egyptian social media since the beginning of July 2020. 100 narratives reporting this man s verbal and physical abuse of his victims were posted on an Instagram account called @assaultpolice. The story of this person who was dubbed, the ‘Sex Predator’, trended on Twitter and Instagram, and was then picked up by many Egyptian talk shows. The focus of social media and TV channels on the events of this story motivated the Egyptian National Council for Women (NCW) to interfere and stand by the victims by reporting the case to the Prosecution Council. This created a controversy in such a conservative society as Egypt which has always tended to blame the victim of any kind of sexual abuse. This paper uses a corpus-assisted Discourse Historical approach to analyse these narratives and explore how they construct the sexual aggressor and the victims.