Occupying the streets, occupying words. Reframing new feminisms through reappropriation

Abstract

This paper presents a Critical and Socio-Cognitive analysis of protest discourse as created in slogans for feminist rallies taking place in Spain (2017–2020). The study focuses on the discursive evolution of the term manada (‘wolfpack’), from its origins as a metonymy to refer to a gang rape taking place in the San Fermín bullfighting celebration of July 2016, to its reappropriation by feminists to bring attention to gender violence and, most importantly, to create a positive in-group identity of cohesion and empowerment, while delegitimizing and dispossessing the out-group, rapists, of their power. The analysis shows how reappropriation, together with recontextualization and multimodal creativity, helps to understand the impact of a single term, manada, in the transformation of the traditional discourse of fear and threat into one of solidarity and hope when addressing gender violence, as well as its effects on the constructions of new cognitive and social frames within the community.