WhatsApp e o contexto discursivo como prova de violência contra a Mulher

n Brazil, the ‘Maria da Penha’ law (Law 11.340, of August 7, 2006) isconcerned with the crime of feminicide and it creates mechanisms to protect wo-men who are victims of psychological and/or physical violence. Despite this law,the number of femicides increases daily. In 2015, the Map of Violence estimatedthe number of femicides at 4.8% per 100,000 women – one murder every 90 minutesand 5 beatings every 2 minutes – which placed Brazil in fifth place. The documentshowed that we had with the rise of the extreme right spreading patriarchal andsexist propaganda, a 30% increase in acts of violence against women is expected.However, states of violence and psychological violence caused by abusive relati-onships are not counted in these data. Within social media, there are countlesssemioses that denounce violence and abuse, which could be used as evidence incourt, and even to prevent deaths. This article analyzes discursive stylistic markspresent in WhatsApp messages exchanged between a victim of femicide and herbest female friend – that indicate a state of violence, possible physical and psy-chological violence – in a case which had wide national repercussion. We useDiscourse Analysis applied in a forensic linguistics context to discuss the crime ofhomicide, using as theoretical support van Dijk (2012), Charaudeau (2001), Cano(2012), and Sousa Silva and Coulthard (2016). The analysis raises interesting lin-guistic issues such as the concepts of “context” that evidence constant situationsof state of violence within the interaction process.