This chapter studies the way in which an infamous nineteenth-century couple, Frederick and Maria Manning, was described in the news of a murder case, and how by the use of person reference they were placed into a particular social group. The interest is in whether the social representation of murderers became the way in which the Mannings were described as individuals, and in whether the resulting social identities could be considered stable or variable. The study shows that although evaluative reference was mostly rather neutral in tone, the Mannings were in general referred to as negatively as other nineteenth-century murderers. However, there was also situational variation linked to momentary empathy, which made the couple’s social representation less stable than expected.
1986 “The Language of Prejudice.” In Language Awareness, ed. by Paul Escholz, Alfred Rosa, and Virginia Clark, 261–270. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Bednarek, Monika
2006Evaluation in Media Discourse: Analysis of a Newspaper Corpus. London: Continuum.
Bednarek, Monika, and Helen Caple
2012News Discourse. London: Bloomsbury.
Clark, Kate
1992 “The Linguistics of Blame: Representations of Women in the Sun’s Reporting of Crimes of Sexual Violence.” In Language, Text and Context: Essays in Stylistics, ed. by Michael Toolan, 208–224. London: Routledge.
Conboy, Martin
2002The Press and Popular Culture. London: SAGE.
Conboy, Martin
2010The Language of Newspapers: Socio-Historical Perspectives. London: Continuum.
Diamond, Michael
2003Victorian Sensation, or the Spectacular, the Shocking and the Scandalous in Nineteenth-Century Britain. London: Anthem Press.
Dickens, Charles
1852–1853Bleak House. London: Bradbury & Evans.
Emsley, Clive
2005Crime and Society in England, 1750–1900. Harlow: Longman.
Hogg, Michael A.
2005 “Uncertainty, Social Identity and Ideology.” In Social Identification in Groups, ed. by Shane R. Thye, and Edward J. Lawler, 203–229. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
2003London: The Wicked City. London: Robson Books.
Linnane, Fergus
2004London’s Underworld: Three Centuries of Vice and Crime. London: Robson Books.
Martin, James R.
2000 “Beyond Exchange: Appraisal Systems in English.” In Evaluation in Text, ed. by Susan Hunston, and Geoff Thompson, 142–175. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Martin, James R., and Peter R. R. White
2005The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
2012The Language of Crime and Deviance: An Introduction to Critical Linguistic Analysis in Media and Popular Culture. London: Continuum.
Moscovici, Serge
1984 “The Phenomenon of Social Representations.” In Social Representations, ed. by Robert M. Farr, and Serge Moscovici, 3–69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nevala, Minna
2016 “Solidarity in Evaluation: The Portrayal of Murderers and Their Victims in Late Nineteenth-Century Newspapers.” In The Pragmatics and Stylistics of Identity Construction and Characterisation (Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English 17), ed. Minna Nevala, Ursula Lutzky, Gabriella Mazzon, and Carla Suhr. Helsinki: VARIENG. Available online at: [URL] (accessed 15 April 2019).
2000 “Evaluation: An Introduction.” In Evaluation in Text, ed. by Susan Hunston, and Geoff Thompson, 1–27. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Van Dijk, Teun A.
2009Society and Discourse: How Social Contexts Influence Text and Talk. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Van Leeuwen, Theo
2008Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
White, Peter R. R.
2001 “Appraisal Outline.” [URL] (accessed 15 April 2019).
Wodak, Ruth
2008 “ ‘Us’ and ‘Them’: Inclusion/Exclusion – Discrimination via Discourse.” In Migration, Identity, and Belonging, ed. by Gerard Delanty, Ruth Wodak, and Paul Jones, 54–78. Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press.
Cited by
Cited by 4 other publications
Chaemsaithong, Krisda
2022. Moral legitimation in capital trials: the case of the prosecution’s closing summation. Text & Talk 42:6 ► pp. 849 ff.
Chaemsaithong, Krisda & Yoonjeong Kim
2023. Making death (in)different: discursive legitimation in death trials. Social Semiotics 33:4 ► pp. 841 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 23 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.