Duterte’s Polemic Against the Catholic Church as Hate Speech

Abstract

This study examines thirteen speeches of President Rodrigo Duterte that contain lines, paragraphs, and expletives directed against the Roman Catholic Church, to determine if they are forms of hate speech. These speeches were delivered from August 2016, two months after he assumed office, up to May 2017. These rhetorical resources were directed toward the Church and its clergy, which criticized Duterte’s war on drugs, and they have been analyzed using a modified version of the dangerous speech framework of the U.S.-based Dangerous Speech Project (Benesch, 2013), which has five rhetorical elements: speaker, content and its context, audience, medium, and response. This study defines hate speech as a speech that attacks personal dignity, dehumanizes groups, incites discrimination, advocates hostility, creates a social wedge, and imputes a crime.

Why do we need a sociocognitive-CDA in hate speech studies? A corpus-based systematic review

“…Religion-based discrimination, reflected in statements containing insults, is also evident in the study conducted by Chua and Labiste (2020). In their review of thirteen statements by President Rodrigo Duterte, Philippines, from 31 August 2016 to 13 May 2017, Chua and Labiste (2020) seek to uncover the use of rhetoric that reflects contempt for the Roman Catholic Church. In this case, Chua and Lebiste apply the analytical framework of “the dangerous speech framework of the U.S.-based Dangerous Speech Project” model of Benesch (p. 9).…”

“…It is because hate speech uttered by politicians or important figures can be uttered at any time. Politicians often utter hate speech by using particular rhetoric in other social dynamics, ranging from anti-refugee or immigrant rhetoric (Sakki and Pettersson, 2018; Nortio et al, 2020) to the anti-immigrant rhetoric of The Catholic Church (Chua and Labiste, 2020) and anti-Muslims (Pettersson, 2019). In this case, the study of Sakki and Pettersson (2018) shows how the rhetorical changes developed by parliamentarians during the summer of 2015 and 2016 concerning the refugee crisis and asylum seekers in Finland.…”

“…The actors behind hate speech are very varied (as can be inferred from Table 5) and, in many cases, involve high-profile people. Hate speech can even involve high-position officials of a country, ranging from the president (Chua and Labiste, 2020) and members of parliament (Sakki and Pettersson, 2018). In addition, social actors also come from separatist groups (Chiluwa, 2018), social media (Siapera and Viejo-Otero, 2021; Fajri, 2019; Merrill and Åkerlund, 2018), and political parties (Burke et al, 2020).…”

“…In previous studies, the relationship between hate speech and religion-based discrimination stands out in studies 5, 6, 12, 18, 51, and 70, as shown in Figure 3, such as the study conducted by Cervone et al (2021), Chua andLabiste (2020), andZollo (2017). Cervone et al (2021), for example, show how insulting language plays a role in perpetuating prejudice and creating a group hierarchy (p. 84), in addition to other impacts, such as social exclusion and repression (p. 88).…”