Heterosexual young people's discourses concerning dating violence

The aim of this study is to examine the "interpretative repertoires" which are the resources of the discourses of young adults from Turkey on dating violence and to investigate the "ideological dilemmas" accompany to these discourses. In-depth interviews are made with 8 women and 7 men between the ages of 18 and 30. The interviews are tape-recorded, transcribed and then the texts of the interviews are analyzed by discourse analysis. As a result of analysis, four interpretative repertoires are obtained; Gender, Biology, Love and Affair. In addition to these repertoires, an ideological dilemma is observed which can be named as 'Violence is Intolerable/Acceptable Violence'. Considering the findings as a whole, it can be said that gender norms based on patriarchal and dichotomic gender ideology are influential in the formation of partners' roles, responsibilities and expectations; and remain unfulfilled of those expectations leads up to dating violence and makes partners' 'love' questionable. In relation with the hegemonic gender norms, the participants normalize and justify the violence or they deny the existence of violence in dating relationships on the basis of 'the practices and necessities of romantic relationship', 'biological/natural structure of human beings and/or males' or 'love'. Keywords: Dating Violence, Gender, Discourse Analysis, Interpretative Repertoires, Ideological Conflicts