The Discursive Construction of Certainty and Uncertainty in the Scientific Texts of Forensic Psychiatry

Rosa Scardigno; Ignazio Grattagliano; Amelia Manuti; Giuseppe Mininni

doi:10.29038/eejpl.2020.7.1.sca

Authors

Rosa Scardigno University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy
Ignazio Grattagliano University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy
Amelia Manuti University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy
Giuseppe Mininni University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29038/eejpl.2020.7.1.sca

Keywords:

scientific communication, certainty/uncertainty, socio-epistemic rhetoric, diatextual analysis.

Abstract

A common ground between mental health and judicial-legal domains concerns concepts like “care”, “control” and “possibility to foresee” human behaviour, with particular reference to the “social dangerousness”. The connections between these sense-making practices can be traced by discursive modulation of “certainty/uncertainty”. This study aimed to highlight the discursive peculiarities of a specific socio-cultural context and genre, namely scientific papers. The corpus of data consisted in a selection of 30 papers published by the BJP (from 1975 to 2015), on subjects concerning forensic psychiatry, subjected to Content Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis. Results showed that the papers adopted two main socio-epistemic rhetorics. On one side, the enunciators proceeded in an “assertive” and rigorous manner through a social-epistemic rhetoric of “reassurance”; on the other side, they gave voice to rhetoric of the “limit”, lacking any cognitive “closure”.

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Author Biographies

Rosa Scardigno, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy

ORCID: 0000-0002-5725-6483

Scopus Author ID: 38862931400

rosa.scardigno@uniba.it
Ignazio Grattagliano, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy

ORCID: 0000-0001-5929-5868

Scopus Author ID: 56738914000

ignazio.grattagliano@uniba.it
Amelia Manuti, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy

ORCID: 0000-0001-5308-7494

Scopus Author ID: 38862224500

amelia.manuti@uniba.it
Giuseppe Mininni, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy

Scopus Author ID: 35300189100

giuseppe.mininni@uniba.it

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