Dr Reshmi Dutta-Flanders, Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of English Language & Linguistics, will be presenting at the 9th Discourse, Communication and the Enterprise conference (DICOEN9) to be held at Aston University, 22-24 June 2017
Reshmi’s paper is entitled,’ The ‘Why’ Behind the ‘What’ in a Crime Narrative: An Applied Approach’.
There is great deal of research on the structure of narrative and its mode and on the narrative positioning and counter positioning of the actor in legal and social contexts. In offender narratives, personal experiences are embedded for observation and analysis of particular realities that contextualise a disposition of the perpetrator being a victim of circumstances, ‘an undergoer’ rather than an ‘effector’ of actions, evaluated in the shift from narrated action to speaker utterance in prospection and in anticipation of the criminal act.
Using techniques from systemic functional linguistics and narratology, Reshmi will use examples from Tony Parker’s book Life After Life: Interviews with Twelve Murderers (1990) to cultivate an effective approach for the search of personal themes underlying the act of crime. Based on personal circumstances and experiences, this is the ‘story of intentionality’ in crime narratives, characteristically structured as the first story of crime and the second story of investigation.
Reshmi will be presenting on Friday 23 June.
DICOEN9 aims to promote and foster interaction between those interested in discourse and communication in organizational settings, and follows a series of successful conferences held alternate years. The focus of the 2017 conference is ‘From Theory to Application’: it aims to encourage scholars to think about ways their research can inform practice, either by offering a lens for the critical exploration of organisational processes or to cultivate effective communication practices.
For more details about DICOEN9, please see the dedicated page on Aston University’s website: www.aston.ac.uk/lss/research/research-centres/ccisc/news-and-events/2016/dicoen9/