Telling it Like it isn’t

Obscuring Perpetrator Responsibility for Violent Crime

Dados Bibliográficos

ID12253232
AutoresLinda Coates (0000-0003-4433-6676, University of Lethbridge, autor correspondente), Allan Wade
Ano2004
Volume15
Fascículo5
Páginas499-526
Data de publicação2004-09-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoDiscourse & Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0957-9265 • E-ISSN: 1460-3624
EditoraSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0957926504045031
OpenAlexW1970128214
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas76
Referências citadas28

Part I of this article introduces the interactional and discursive view of violence and resistance, part II illustrates its application to the analysis of sexual assault trial judgments, and part III provides a detailed analysis of an entire judgment. In giving their reasons for verdicts and sentences, the majority of judges accounted for the assaults by drawing on psychological concepts and constructs. These psychological explanations or causal attributions were grouped into one or more of eight categories: alcohol and drug abuse, biological or sexual drive, psychopathology, dysfunctional family upbringing, stress and trauma, character or personality trait, emotional state, and loss of control. The causal attributions in all categories systematically reformulated deliberate acts of violence into non-deliberate and non-violent acts. Psychologizing attributions, that is, causal attributions that functioned to conceal the violence and mitigate the perpetrator’s responsibility, accounted for 97 percent of attributions. Through line-by-line analyses of the full text of one judgment, we show how psychologizing attributions are combined in use with other linguistic devices to (i) conceal violence, (ii) mitigate perpetrators’ responsibility, (iii) conceal victims’ resistance, and (iv) blame or pathologize victims

Attribution · Blame · Causation · Dysfunctional family · Resistance (ecology · Clinical Psychology · Psychology · Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending · Sexual Assault and Victimization Studies · Social Psychology · Stalking, Cyberstalking, and Harassment