Source: French to English Tester Published on: 2026-05-13
Source: The Conversation – in French– By Laferrière Aude, Lecturer in Linguistics, IAE Saint-Etienne
A study delved into text messages and emails sent by fathers and judged offensive or intimidating by the mothers who received them, in contexts of contentious or violent separations, revealing a collection of misogynistic remarks.
Co-parenting, in case of separation, can turn into forced communication when it strays from its objective ofconstruction of a joint project for the childand that it turns into the symbolic destruction of the other.
To quote the social psychology researcherAndreea Gruev-Vintila, specialist in coercive control, co-parenting can then turn into “counter-parenting” and become a “freeway” to denigrate, intimidate, and constantly harass the other parent.
Also to read:
Coercive control: why this concept is transforming the understanding of violence against women and children
I wanted to identify and linguistically characterize what, in coparental exchanges, is perceived as violence by the recipients, in order to objectify it, given that violent verbal or psychological behaviors are sometimesdifficult to legally qualify.
To build this study corpus, I approached actors who could support co-parents during conflictual or violent separations (associations aiding victims of domestic violence, social workers, forensic psychologists, psychologists…). Through this channel, twenty mothers provided me with electronic writings – SMS and emails – from the other parent (male) whom they identified as injuring or intimidating them.
Regarding this non-mixed nature of the corpus, it is de facto so: none of the few men encountered in the associations or patient groups declared themselves concerned. Studies show it: on the one hand, themen rarely recognize themselves as victims, due to gender stereotypes that make them feel ashamed of experiencing domestic violence; on the other hand,It is men who predominantly commit violence.
Language Routines
To carry outthese linguistic analyses, I adopt theactional conception of languagewhich is envisaged as a tool to act on what surrounds us. Any speech act is a form of social action producing real effects.
It is in this capacity that I will speak of a speech act by borrowing my tools from sociolinguistics andpragmatic, which aims to study the effects of language. More precisely, I rely on the multiple studies carried out since the 2000s by theresearch group on verbal violence.
That the evaluation of violence can vary from one individual to another does not prevent the corpus from presenting what this research group calls a cluster of “acts of condemnation of others” (criticism, accusations, threats…) sharing an aggressive potential. Here are six acts of condemnation that resurface from one correspondence to another, like linguistic routines, imbued withmisogynistic stereotypes. They are illustrated here by sentences extracted from the study corpus.
The manipulative woman: “You manipulative creature!”, “You are sneaky”
Theinsultand more broadly the pejorative qualification constituting direct attacks on the image of the target. They stigmatize, while masking personal judgment under the guise of irrefutable truth, thus constituting enunciative coups de force: the speaker imposes an idea without allowing it to be discussed.
Moreover, they mobilize here themisogynistic stereotype of the deceitful womanA: the person sending the message then positions themselves as the one who exposes and thwarts the malicious strategies attributed to the separated mother. In doing so, the insult is disguised with a semblance of legitimacy, as if it were an act of self-defense by the separated father against the reprehensible actions he is purportedly a victim of.
The mercenary woman: “Money, you love it when it is for you”
The denigration of the co-parent involves“reproaches about the being”A: she is essentialized under a pejorative aspect, here by mobilizing the cliché of the venal woman, which often combines with that of the ex-avenger whose goal would be toto kill one’s ex-partner.
Directed at the mother, it can be phrased as an accusation of embezzling child support for personal purposes: “From the pension I pay you, could there be enough left to buy shoes for our child?” one of the fathers questions. Such a message then combines the reproach of a greedy woman with that of a selfish and neglectful mother.
The woman put in the pillory: “Everyone finds you appalling”
The act of condemnation is sometimes exacerbated by the idea of a public disqualification. The speaker presents their personal judgment as endorsed by other people (here, an anonymous mass).
This so-called appeal to the people argument refers, among others,attacker’s strategies, to that of “recruiting allies.” A slander that can cause the mother offeelings of humiliation leading her to self-exclude.
The pathologization of women: “You have an inner malaise,” “You are ruining the lives of our children with your neuroses!”
A genuine“rhetoric of diagnosis”is deployed, which consists of attributing a psychiatric disorder to the woman in order to discredit the mother. The phrase “deep down inside you” reveals a “breach” which consists of “penetrating into the other’s psychic territory […] to think for the other”.as noted by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Marie-France Hirigoyen.
Moreover, these depictions of mothers overwhelmed by emotional and physical outbursts are deeply sexist, invoking thestereotype of the emotional, fragile, and hysterical woman-term that appears in certain messages. Finally, this portrait of the co-parent as a neurotic and harmful mother reflects a strategy of demonization through which the sender constructs, by contrast and monopoly, the image of the healthy and protective parent.
The threat of going to court: “If you refuse, I will take the family court judge”
Thethreatreduces the target’s freedom of choice to two options: obey or be sanctioned. A true ultimatum, it combines an intimidating function – by using institutions, here judicial ones, to instill fear (the stick argument) – and an injunctive function since it aims to make the target obey.
“I ask you to respect the schedule. 5:30 pm is not 5:45 pm. In case of deviation, you will pick up your children at the police station,” also writes a father. Here, the children are also instrumentalized. Their mention as collateral victims sets up emotional blackmail. Furthermore, the reproach directed at the recipient (here her lack of punctuality during handovers) acts as a legitimation of the threat, presented as a simple reaction from the father to a failure on the mother’s part. Hence, she is held responsible for the threatening male behavior (role reversal strategy).
Judicial threats also have a high extortion power because they play not only on the mother’s fear of seeing the custody arrangement revised but also on having to (re)live the psychological ordeal of going to court, as well as the associated financial burden (economic threat).
Instrumentalization of the child: “Our child will know everything and will not forgive you”
This type of dark prophecy for the mother employs several strategies. First of all, it involves the instrumentalization of the child, in this threat of a “coalition,” in which “a parent tries to form an alliance with the child against the other parent,” according to the definition of the clinical psychologist.Nicolas Favez. This triangulation circulates a disparaging discourse about the mother orchestrator « the sabotage of the mother/child relationship » (Andreea Gruev-Vintila).
Moreover, it reads “the control of the narrative,” which leads women to think “that they will have no way out because their truth will be punished in the face of the triumphant narrative of the aggressor” (Gruev-Vintila, still).
While these acts of condemnation appear individualized, adjusted to what would be the “dysfunctional” personality of the co-parent, their recurrence in the corpus reveals that they stem from social, systemic violence.
Accusing mothers of incompetence aims to hurt and destabilize them by undermining their self-confidence. The repetition – an aggravating factor in verbal violence – of these disparaging remarks creates moral harassment that disrupts the daily exercise of maternal parenting and, consequently, weakens the child.
From then on, it is fundamental to identify these verbal violences advancing under the legitimizing mask of co-parenting, so that mothers can protect themselves from them and the various actors in the penal chain (law enforcement, judicial police officers, magistrates, etc.) can detect them. It is at thislinguistic profilingthat I dedicate my research to.
Aude Laferrière does not work for, advise, hold shares in, or receive funds from any organization that could benefit from this article, and has declared no other affiliation than her research institution.
–ref. Contentious or even violent separations: what fathers’ verbal attacks reveal –https://theconversation.com/contentious-or-even-violent-separations-what-the-verbal-attacks-of-fathers-reveal-278136