Criminal Discourse and Gender Differences: A Forensic Approach
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Date
2014-06-22
Authors
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university Mouloud Mammeri of Tizi-Ouzou
Abstract
The present study is concerned with the analysis of males’ and females’ criminal discourse. It
is intended to determine whether male and female criminals are different with respect to the
use of hedging, negation and evaluative adjectives. It uses Tannen’s (1990) Cultural
Approach and takes into account Lakoff’s (1975) stereotypes regarding males’ and female’
linguistic differences. In order to gather the data, extracts from the Reality TV series Prison
Diaries (2011), featuring first-person interviews, and Inside Death Row with Trevor
McDonald (2013), featuring interviews conducted by the British newsreader and journalist
Trevor McDonald, are randomly selected. In all, six hundred and twenty-four utterances in
English are examined using Mixed Methods Research. The study, in fact, combines between
quantitative and qualitative methods. It uses a descriptive statistical method to elicit statistical
data, then, adopts a forensic approach along Critical Discourse Analysis for the interpretation
and explanation of the results. The results obtained show significant differences between male
and female criminals on the use of hedging, negation and evaluative adjectives. Although the
findings do confirm that male and female criminals speak differently, they are neither in total
conformity with the claims put by Lakoff (1975) nor with those postulated by Tannen (1990)
at least with respect to the use of hedging, negation and evaluative adjectives within the
corpus inspected in this research. The conclusion to be drawn from these finding is that the
discourse of female criminals is a kind of rebellion against gender stereotypes. Females assert
themselves in society and no more assume the victim role assigned to them within decades of
sociolinguistic study on language and gender differences. This neither provides support for
the Dominance Approach nor for the Difference Approach with regards to the study of
language and gender differences. Males’ and females’ language differences are rather influenced by the context of language use.
Description
87p.:ill;30cm.(+cd)
Keywords
Citation
Language and Communication