This qualitative study advances research on homophobic and transphobic discourse by combining critical discourse analysis with AI-assisted methods. While previous work has identified the topos of threat as a common feature of both, the present study shifts the focus to emotional strategies, examining how contempt and disgust operate alongside argumentative framing. The analysis draws on a corpus of approximately 2,000 annotated online comments (1,000 homophobic and 1,000 transphobic). AI-based and lexicon-driven sentiment analysis, supported by statistical testing, complement a fine-grained qualitative comparison of affective and discursive patterns. The findings reveal that contempt overwhelmingly structures discourse targeting both communities, whereas disgust appears more prominently in homophobic comments. Rather than functioning as a reactive response to perceived threat, contempt emerges as a stabilizing emotion that reinforces social hierarchies, moral superiority, gender policing, and—in our data—forms of institutional exclusion. In terms of framing, the misfit social frame dominates across both datasets, while the medical frame is more strongly associated with transphobic discourse. Overall, the results point to a shared affective architecture centered on contempt, with disgust playing a more marginal but differentiated role. At the same time, homophobic discourse exhibits a higher proportion and intensity of negative content, suggesting subtle differences in tone and interactional dynamics. Discussions of transphobic speech, by contrast, show a greater presence of counter-narratives. Finally, we explore the extent to which these features support the automatic detection of homophobic versus transphobic discourse. While classification remains moderately accurate, emotional and framing features prove complementary to lexical cues when combined. To our knowledge, this is the first study to systematically contrast homophobic and transphobic discourse through the joint lens of emotion and framing, offering insights into the development of more targeted counter-discursive strategies.
Baider et al. (Fri,) studied this question.