Denial of the concept of humanity by means of verbal insults. Study of two sub-categories of women.

This research looks further into biased attitudes towards “prostitutes”. More specifically, by means of the indirect method of verbal insults, the denial of the concept of person was investigated as regards two sub-categories of women: “prostitutes” and “girlfriends”. Using a specially designed questionnaire, differentiated according to the proposed target, a critical situation was presented to which participants were asked to respond by means of insults and curses. The main results, discussed in reference to studies on infra-humanisation and ontologising, show that whereas insults referring to the animal sphere are used for the subcategory “prostitutes” on the whole, rebukes and insults denying any psychological properties are attributed to the “girlfriend” category. This indicates that the sub-category “prostitute” is excluded from the human community, inasmuch as it is considered less human than the sub-category of “girlfriend”. The study also demonstrates that the method of verbal insults constitutes an innovative approach, able to identify specific contents of the de-humanisation taking place.