This article uses Text World Theory (Werth 1999; Gavins 2007) in conjunction with VUE (Visual Understanding Environment) concept mapping software to analyze three
statements from the trial of Amanda Knox, who was charged (along with her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito) with the murder of
Meredith Kercher in 2007. We compare the cognitive patterns (i.e. text-worlds) as reflected in Knox’s statements and use the
insights gained to guide an examination of their individual linguistic features and associated potential legal implications. In
the first two dictated statements, Knox is projected as an actor responsible for the reported actions/events that
implicate her in the crime, whereas in the third statement (handwritten in English), she is projected as a
senser, presenting more prominent epistemic uncertainty and indicating bewilderment. Further micro-level
linguistic comparison indicates signs of textual alteration in the first two statements, i.e. crucial text was altered and thus
resulted in a change of meaning and legal significance.
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2016b‘This is not the end of the world’: Situating metaphor in the text-worlds of the 2008 British financial crisis. In World Building: Discourse in the Mind, Joanna Gavins & Ernestine Lahey (eds). London: Bloomsbury: 183–201.
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2016Analysis and implications of the miscarriages of justice of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito. Forensic Science International: Genetics 231: 9–18.
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2018Text-world annotation and visualization for crime narrative reconstruction. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities.
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2016World-building in Spanish and English Spoken Narratives. London: Bloomsbury.
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2023. The phallic girl goes to Italy: Amanda Knox, post-feminism and phallicism between the national and international spheres. European Journal of Women's Studies 30:3 ► pp. 331 ff.
Ho, Yu-Fang, Jane Lugea, Dan McIntyre, Zhijie Xu & Jing Wang
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Vathanalaoha, Kriangkrai
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