From victims to survivors: The discourse of trauma in self-narratives of sexual violence in Cosmopolitan UK online

This article explores the discourse of trauma in 35 women’s self-narratives of sexual violence in Cosmopolitan UK online from a rarely used theoretical framework that combines critical discourse analysis (CDA) and trauma studies which allows for an examination of how emotions are thematized and emotional bonds are created synthetically with imagined readers. This study demonstrates that while the self-narratives are shaped by dominant discourses of trauma and the policy of the magazine, the circulation of the discursive practices of emotions sometimes disrupt these dominant forms of representation. It is hoped that this study has implications that exceed the scope of women’s online magazines for sociolinguistics of discourse by emphasizing the important part played by emotions in relation to politics and vice versa.