The linguistics of blame: representations of women in The Sun's reporting of crimes of sexual violence

In our society men commit acts of violence on women every day. All women's lives are affected by this: by actual violence or by the fear of it. For this reason, the messages that a popular newspaper engenders in its reporting of such crimes are critical. In this study of reports by The Sun newspaper (a tabloid daily with the largest circulation of all the British dailies) of male violence against women and girls, I am interested in who is blamed for an attack and how language is used to convey that blame.