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Part of
Diachronic Developments in English News Discourse
Edited by Minna Palander-Collin, Maura Ratia and Irma Taavitsainen
[Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 6] 2017
► pp. 199–216

Chapter 11
The public identity of Jack the Ripper in late nineteenth-century British newspapers

The article studies evaluative language in 200 newspaper articles from the latter half of 1888, focusing on the five canonical Ripper murders. The aim is to study terms used to refer to the Ripper and his murders on the basis of the parameters of intensity, solidarity, and objectivity. This pilot study discusses how in the newspapers the public identity of Jack the Ripper was ultimately developed from a plain perpetrator into a murderous maniac capable of monstrous deeds. The findings indicate that an increase in intensity seems to be linked to a decrease in both solidarity and objectivity. Thus, negative evaluation was increasingly used and person reference to the Ripper changed towards extreme negativity over a relatively short period of time.

Keywords: Referential terms, evaluation, news language, criminals, nineteenth-century Britain, historical sociopragmatics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Social identity and language use
    • 2.1Social identity construction
    • 2.2Evaluative language
  • 3.Crime and criminals in late nineteenth-century British newspapers
  • 4.Murderer most foul: Studying Jack the Ripper
    • 4.1The Ripper murders in closer view
    • 4.2Material and method in the current study
  • 5.Reference in the Ripper news
    • 5.1Mary Ann Nichols
    • 5.2Annie Chapman
    • 5.3Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes
    • 5.4Mary Jane Kelly
  • 6.Concluding the Ripper evaluation
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 29 August 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ahs.6.11nev
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Cited by (3)

Cited by 3 other publications

Nevala, Minna & Arja Nurmi
2020. Being Wilde. In Late Modern English [Studies in Language Companion Series, 214], ► pp. 316 ff. DOI logo
Dossena, Marina
2019. The Prince and the Sassenach. In Reference and Identity in Public Discourses [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 306], ► pp. 43 ff. DOI logo
Nevala, Minna
2019. Two miserable creatures or those atrocious criminals?. In Reference and Identity in Public Discourses [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 306], ► pp. 19 ff. DOI logo

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