Abstract:
This study investigates how Algerian female TikTok users experience and respond to verbal harassment in digital spaces, and how language constructs gendered relations of power online. Built on Gee’s (2011) Seven Building Tasks of Language and Lazar’s (2005) Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis, the research adopts a qualitative approach to explore six TikTok videos featuring prominent Algerian female influencers. The data consists of spoken discourse, captions, and multimodal elements such as gestures, tone, and visual expression. The findings reveal that Algerian women are exposed to several forms of verbal harassment, including identity- based and gender-based attacks. These are usually perpetuated through techniques such as normalization, victim-blaming, and ideologizing, which shift the blame onto women. Nevertheless, the analysis indicates that these women engage in constructing linguistic choices of resisting harassment through different discursive strategies, namely rhetorical questions, irony, semantics, code-switching, and even other multimodal resources
