Rhetorical contours of violent frames and the production of discursive violence

In this essay, I analyze print news coverage concerning the feminicides in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico, which some legal advocates-activists position as a crime against humanity. Such a classification underscores the magnitude that one might expect, but fails, to manifest in news coverage. Spanning a 14-year period, I examine 113 print news articles published in the U.S. Combining framing analysis with considerations of loss and grievability, revealed are three frames, their rhetorical dimensions and rhetorical distance effected. One frame, a “city of two faces,” is simultaneously absent and filled with violence that structures understandings of Ciudad Juárez. The oppositional nature of the “faces,” combined with the manifestations of violence, produce “negative valence” that bears on a second frame of “victims, bodies, and murdered women.” Its rhetorical contours provoke discursive violence resulting in double violations against Mexican women and girls of the feminicides. The final frame, “grieving mothers,” is limited in its ability to counteract rhetorical distance fostered by the first two frames. Individually and combined, the frames effect discursive violence, conceived as masking or effacing other forms of violence and/or productive of negative valence, that colludes with other manifestations of violence all the while ignoring U.S. complicity. Recognizing discursive violence for what it is, and the role of media frames, reveals how profoundly audiences could be primed. Media frames can activate audiences so that they view violence as an inevitability in Mexico, view the victims as less than sympathetic, and pity grieving mothers. Therefore, this analysis orients scholars’ attention to the ways that discourse fosters rhetorical distance and advances more concretely the relationship of frames and discursive violence.