Production and reception of Fathers’ construction of their daughter’s sexuality on Twitter

Research has found humour and gender to be linked (Davies, 2006, Gendered sense of humor as expressed through aesthetic typifications. Journal of Pragmatics, 38(1), 96–113. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2005.06.006; Kotthoff 2006, Gender and humor: The state of the art. Journal of pragmatics, 38(1), 4–25. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2005.06.003), specifically within languages/cultures (see Thielemann, 2011, Displays of’ new’ gender arrangements in Russian jokes. In M. Dynel (Ed.), The pragmatics of humour across discourse domains (pp. 147–172). John Benjamins, for jokes in Russian). In this respect, women are often subject of jokes and, in some cases, this reproduces the gendered imbalance of suitable roles in private and public spaces. In this paper, I examine the message of two jokes told by Italian fathers policing their daughters’ sexuality, as well as the interactions between myself and these fathers on Twitter. Using Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (Lazar, 2007, Feminist critical discourse analysis: Articulating a feminist discourse praxis. Critical Discourse Studies, 4(2), 141–164. doi:10.1080/17405900701464816; Lazar, 2018, Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis. In J. Flowerdew, & E. J. Richardson (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies (pp. 372–387). Routledge), Social Media Critical Discourse Studies (KhosraviNik, 2018, Social Media Critical Discourse Studies (SM-CDS). In J. Flowerdew, & E. J. Richardson (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies (pp. 582–596). Routledge) and through adapting a framework designed to approach sexist jokes (Sunderland, 2007, Contradictions in gendered discourses: feminist readings of sexist jokes? Gender & Language, 1(2), 207–228. doi:10.1558/genl.v1i2.207), I discuss: (a) the ‘who/what the text is about’, and (b) a desire to a traditional fatherhood emerging from the interactions in it’s just banter and the good and happy father. Specifically, I discuss fatherhood as linked to an ontological desire (Kiesling, 2011, The interactional construction of desire as gender. Gender and Language, 5(2), 213–239. doi:10.1558/genl.v5i2.213) in connection to an alleged transition from old to new fatherhood (Cannito 2019, Beyond ‘Traditional’ and ‘New’: An Attempt of Redefinition of Contemporary Fatherhoods through Discursive Practices and Practices of Care. Men and Masculinities, 1–19; Magaraggia, 2013, Tensions between fatherhood and the social construction of masculinity in Italy. Current Sociology, 61(1), 76–92. doi:10.1177/0011392112464231) in Italy.