THE GRAMMAR OF SUBALTERNIZATION AND THE COLONIALITY OF DIGITAL HATE: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF DEHUMANIZATION, POLITICAL MISOGYNY AND REGIONALISM IN BRAZIL (2018–2022)
TL;DR
The findings identify a shared grammar of subalternization: sanitary and zoological metaphors authorize symbolic expulsion, pathologizing predications discipline women in public life, and territorial generalizations transform historical inequality into presumed civic incapacity.
Abstract
Brazilian digital polarization unfolds within a Global South ecosystem in which transnational platforms interact with historical inequalities of gender, class and territory. This qualitative-critical study examines how discursive constructions of dehumanization, political misogyny and regionalist xenophobia withdraw humanity, public authority and civic discernment from political subjects. The corpus consists of purposively selected public posts from Twitter/X and public Telegram channels published between 2018 and 2022. Maximum-variation sampling considered platform, period, target, linguistic markers and the contrast between explicit and implicit formulations. The analysis connects Fairclough's three-dimensional critical discourse framework with decolonial theory and platform studies, focusing on vocabulary, metaphor, transitivity, predication, modality and intertextuality. The findings identify a shared grammar of subalternization: sanitary and zoological metaphors authorize symbolic expulsion, pathologizing predications discipline women in public life, and territorial generalizations transform historical inequality into presumed civic incapacity. Platform affordances shape the persistence, recirculation, contestation and visibility of these repertoires without determining them. The study offers a situated interpretation of digital violence and graded citizenship in the Global South, while making no claims of statistical prevalence or population-level inference.