The intertextuality and interdiscursivity of “mirroring” in South Korean cyberfeminist posts

This study examines the phenomenon of “mirroring” used by Womad, a cyberfeminist community in South Korea. Mirroring involves the reversal of gender to spotlight misogynist practices that might otherwise go unnoticed. To better understand mirroring, we introduce selected posts from Ilbe, a male-dominant online forum, known for denigrating Korean women and then analyze Womad’s posts on similar topics following approaches in critical discourse analysis and feminist post-structuralism. Our analysis examines two main linguistic strategies of mirroring that Womad uses to disrupt gendered ideologies. First, we focus on the use of intertextuality in Womad’s posts through their adoption of Ilbe’s masculine register to combat misogyny by targeting men. Interdiscursivity is another important strategy Womad users deploy to foreground the inequities entrenched in Korea’s long-standing patriarchy. Ultimately, mirroring offers critiques of gender inequity and misogyny through active engagements with everyday linguistic practices online while opening up new possibilities for gender politics.