Language and Crime: Constructing Offenders and Victims in Newspaper Reports

248 Pages·2016·5.247 MB·

by  Ulrike Tabbert (auth.)

Language and Crime
Constructing Offenders and Victims
in Newspaper Reports
Ulrike Tabbert
Language and Crime
Ulrike   T abbert
Language and Crime
Constructing offenders and victims
in newspaper reports
Ulrike Tabbert
Visiting Research Fellow
University of Huddersfi eld , UK

ISBN 978-1-137-45350-1 ISBN 978-1-137-45351-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-45351-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016956376
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To my parents with deep gratitude
Foreword
P eople naturally want to feel secure from harm, or at least to know how
much risk of harm they are exposed to. For most of us, fortunately, our
knowledge of serious harm comes mainly from the media, including
newspapers, rather than at fi rst hand, so what is reported, and how it is
presented, is very important. Or is it so fortunate? How accurate is the
knowledge we think we are getting? Newspapers have more than one
agenda: to inform the public, certainly, but also to attract readers. Th e
London Times, for example, used to pride itself on being a newspaper
of record and would devote space each day to reports of proceedings in
parliament. What our elected representatives say is, we hope, important;
but it was not considered interesting enough, and now it is included only
when there is something out of the ordinary to report.
So it is with crime. Th e commonest crimes receive little coverage, except
when statistics are published showing a marked rise or fall in numbers,
and the rare but serious ones are given prominence. Taking for example
the most serious harm to which we are exposed, namely death: among the
causes (apart from illnesses associated with old age such as cardiovascular
diseases), unintentional injuries rank relatively high (57.0 per 100,000)
including road traffi c accidents (19.1), compared with violence (9.0)1 ; but
1 F igure from 2002, but probably not greatly changed; accessed on 30 March 2016: https://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate#By_frequency.
vii
viii Foreword
their relative reporting in the media is the other way round. Th e greatest
prominence is given to murder, and even that is not always reported unless
it is exceptional in some way: when well-known people were involved, or
it was unusually violent, or there was a particularly vulnerable victim.
Th is refl ects the phenomenon of ‘newsworthiness’, which Ulrike Tabbert
explores in this book among others. To some extent this refl ects the values
which society places on the actions; for example, industrial pollution or
fi nancial malpractice may be regarded as a ‘regulatory off ence’ rather than
a crime, and hence reported on the business pages of a newspaper rather
than the news pages where crimes are usually featured.
But our impression of what goes on in the world around us is aff ected
not only by what is reported but also by the way in which it is reported,
and this calls for more subtle analysis. Here Dr. Tabbert places the
newspaper reporting under the microscope of linguistics, and specifi -
cally critical stylistics. She has chosen examples from Th e Guardian , a
left-leaning paper aimed at an educated readership, and fi nds that even
there, hidden assumptions can be detected in the way journalists report
stories and describe protagonists. It is not clear to what extent they do
so deliberately, or whether they have slipped into stereotyped patterns
of thought, like M. Jourdain in Molière’s play L e bourgeois gentilhomme
who was amazed to be told that he had been speaking prose all his life
without knowing it. By doing so they may, by their choice of words,
reinforce readers’ similar perceptions, in which victims are idealised,
especially if they are children, and off enders are monsters, especially if
they are teenagers. Interestingly, the same words can convey diff erent
impressions, depending on the context; for example, to describe a man
as a middle-aged schoolteacher may make us think of him as worthy and
respectable, but if he is accused of a sexual relationship with a pupil, the
same description carries the judgmental implication that he ought to
have known better.
O ne aspect of ‘newsworthiness’ is the use of headlines; it is not
uncommon to fi nd a reasonably balanced report under a sensational
headline. An interesting explanation of this comes from Finland. Th ere,
almost 90 per cent of newspapers are sold on the basis of subscrip-
tion, and therefore do not have to compete with each other on the
Foreword ix
newsstands through eye- catching headlines. It is suggested that this bal-
anced approach contributed to the fact that the Finnish government
was able to adopt a policy of deliberately reducing the prison popula-
tion, bringing it into line with Scandinavian neighbours, without pro-
voking a populist-punitive outcry (Lappi-Seppälä 2013).
D r. Tabbert also points to other ways in which the message is mas-
saged; for example, by the use of direct quotations as against indirect
speech, or by giving greater credence to offi cial sources and marginalising
alternative ones. All these contribute to the way in which writers compile
a story and thereby construct a reality which may or may not be congru-
ent with the way the characters in the story see it. Th is matters because
public perceptions aff ect public opinion and hence ultimately laws and
the way in which they are enforced; and at another level because off end-
ers also read newspapers (probably ones in which the manipulation of the
stories is more blatant than in Th e Guardian) , and if they are demonised
with humiliating epithets they are all the more likely to live up to their
labels. Th ere are even reports of off enders proudly collecting newspaper
cuttings about themselves. Like other people, many off enders experi-
ence G eltungsbedürfnis , an expressive German word meaning the need to
count for something, and it is all too easy to encourage them to revel in
being labelled as a monster rather than to count for nothing.
Dr. Tabbert has painstakingly analysed these and other tendencies in
news reporting; this is timely, because we need reminding of the power
and importance of language, in a visual age. Readers, especially crimi-
nologists, who are new to linguistics may fi nd that they read their news-
papers with more critical attention.
London, UK Martin Wright
Reference
L appi-Seppälä, T. (2013). Downsizing the use of imprisonment in Finland. In
D. Cornwell, J. Blad, & M. Wright (Eds.), C ivilising criminal justice: An interna-
tional restorative agenda for penal reform (pp. 501–524). Hook: Waterside Press.
Acknowledgements
Writing a book is a collaborative endeavour even if eventually my name
stands on the book cover alone. Sometimes help is provided by extensive
reading and commenting on chapters or the entire text, sometimes it
is ‘just’ a side remark which makes me think and leads to ideas woven
into this book. I wish to thank all contributors, without them this book
would not have been possible.
A profound debt of gratitude I owe to Brian Walker and Martin Wright
for all the time they spent on reading and commenting on a previous ver-
sion of this book. I cannot thank them enough. All remaining issues are
mine, of course.
Furthermore, I wish to thank Tom Considine, Jane Demmen, Lesley
Jeff ries and Lisa Nahajec for reading and commenting on parts of the
book despite the heavy workloads they are already carrying.
Th anks to Ilse A. Ras for commenting on an early draft of the book
structure.
P aul Stevens at Palgrave Macmillan enthusiastically supported this
book project and encouraged me whenever needed.
Karsten Mentzel took care of my computer for which I am grateful.
Th is book is dedicated to my parents who have been my greatest sup-
porters throughout.
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Contents
Foreword by Martin Wright, Former Director of the Howard League
for Penal Reform
1 Crime news and what this book is about 1
1.1 Media 2
1.2 News and news sources 4
1.3 Constructivism and news values 7
1.4 Journalists 9
1.5 What this book is about 13
1.5.1 Th e Guardian among other newspapers 16
1.5.2 Style 21
1.5.3 Stylistic choice 23
2 Critical Stylistics 27
2.1 Defi ning ideology 27
2.2 Critical Stylistics and its textual–conceptual functions 36
3 Naming and describing off enders and victims 43
3.1 Noun phrases and their structure 44
3.2 Noun phrases and their function 49
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