Victimisation and Masculinity in the Polarisation of Misogynist Incel Discourse: Bending van Dijk’s Ideological Square (1998)

In recent years, the incel community – a portmanteau of involuntary celibate, indicating young men who are unable to have a romantic or sexual relationship despite their efforts – has interested discourse studies scholars for their highly discriminatory discourses against minority groups (Prażmo, 2020). A close-knitted community, in their forums incels have developed a distinctive language characterized by neologisms and extensive identity construction strategies (Waśniewska, 2020). By framing their condition as a discrimination based on a supposed genetic inferiority making them unworthy of accessing sex, incels position their social group in opposition to most of society and, above all, to women. Discourse is polarized using an ‘us vs them’ rhetoric that would appear at first sight to fit in with van Dijk’s (1998) ideological square, which has long provided a solid framework for investigating in-group/out-group discourse dynamics. But while the ‘us vs them’ rhetoric conventionally pitches a positive ‘us’ versus a negative ‘them’, Scotto di Carlo (2023) points out that incels seem to breach this pattern. However, I argue that, rather than breaching it, incels make a peculiar use of the ideological square by bending it through narratives of victimization and weaponized subordinate masculinity (Halpin, 2022). Using critical discourse analysis (van Dijk, 1995; 2015; Lazar, 2005; Baxter, 2018) on a corpus of incel forum posts (collected from incel.is and incel.net) this paper aims to investigate how this rhetorical strategy allows them to reproduce harmful representations of women and enforce misogynist discourse practices typical of patriarchal societies.