Living with the decision that someone will die
Linguistic distance and empathy in jurors' death penalty decisions
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2875656 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robin Conley (Marshall University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 503-526 |
| Publication date | 2013-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Language in Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0047-4045 • E-ISSN: 1469-8013 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s004740451300064x |
| OpenAlex | W2135657141 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 11 |
| References cited | 46 |
Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Texas death penalty trials, this article explores how language helps to make death penalty decisions possible-how specific communicative choices mediate and restrict jurors', attorneys', and judges' actions and experiences while serving and reflecting on capital trials. By analyzing postverdict interviews with jurors, trial language, and written legal language, I examine a variety of communicative practices through which defendants are dehumanized and thus considered deserving of death. This dehumanization is made possible through the physical and linguistic management of distance, which enables jurors to deny empathy with defendants and, in turn, justify their sentencing decisions. In addition, the article probes how jurors' linguistic choices can create distance between themselves and the reality of their decisions, further facilitating death sentences. (Law, empathy, deixis, agency, dehumanization, linguistic distance
Agency (philosophy) · Dehumanization · Deixis · Empathy · Linguistics · Social science · Sociology · Interpreting and Communication in Healthcare · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Law in Society and Culture · Psychology · Social Psychology
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Affiliating With Jury
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Person reference, identity, and linguistic violence in capital trials
Asking about bias
Living with the decision that someone will die
Language, Culture, and Justice
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Linguistic Anthropology
Ii.—proper Names
Some Practices for Referring to Persons in Talk-in-Interaction
Common ground at the understanding of demonstrative reference
The Nazi Doctors
Obedience to authority
The Idea of Public Reason Revisited
Alternative recognitionals in person reference
Formal and Transcendental Logic
Person Reference in Interaction
Roots of Human Sociality
Empathy, Democratic Politics, and the Impartial Juror
The language of critical discourse analysis
Frontloading Mitigation
Sensitive New-age Laws
Taking Turns and Taking Sides
Persons and Masks of the Law
Violence and the Capital Jury
Violence without Moral Restraint
Deciding to Take a Life
Speech style and impression formation in a court setting
Persons and Masks of the Law
Return to Reason
Convention
The Idea of Public Reason Revisited
Intertextual authority in reported speech
Action and embodiment within situated human interaction
Demonstratives in Space and Interaction
Living with the decision that someone will die
On the Sociology of Justice
Professional Vision
Experiencing language
Autistic Sociality
From Inchoate Pronouns to Proper Nouns
| Unique citing works | 11 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,85 |
| Citation span | 2013 - 2026 (14) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 11 |