Negotiating narrative
Story structure and identity in youth justice conferencing
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/lhs.v3i2.221Keywords:
Discourse Analysis, Genre, NarrativeAbstract
Youth justice conferencing is one of a number of programs which have been introduced into western legal systems in recent years, typically under the banner of a ‘restorative justice’ reform movement. These conferences bring young people (who have admitted their guilt), victims and other parties into a face-to-face meeting in which the impact of the offence and possible reparative actions are discussed at length. In this paper, based on field observations and transcripts, we report on our preliminary efforts to analyse the generic structure of conferencing, focusing in particular on the accounts given by young people of their offending behaviour. The flat ideational focus of these accounts and the absence of an ongoing prosody of evaluation make them quite unlike the personal recounts typically produced by young people and, while seemingly appropriate to the context of a youth justice conference, also create a genre identity for the young person which may be at odds with the expectations of other conference participants (and indeed theorists of restorative justice) who are looking for signs of sincerity and remorse from the young person.
References
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Eggins, S. and Slade, D. (1997) Analysing Casual Conversation. London: Cassell. (Republished 2005 Equinox.)
Halliday, M. A. K. (1976) Anti-languages. American Anthropologist 78(3): 570–584. (Reprinted in M. A. K. Halliday 2007 Language and Society 265–286. Vol. 10 in The Collected Works of M. A. K. Halliday edited by J. J. Webster. London: Continuum).
Harris, N, L. Walgrave and Braithwaite, J. (2004) Emotional dynamics in restorative conferences. Theoretical Criminology 8(2): 191–210.
Hayes, H. (2006) Apologies and accounts in youth justice conferencing. Contemporary Justice Review 9(4): 369–385.
Hoyle, C., Young, R. and Hill, R. (2002) Proceed with Caution: An Evaluation of the Thames Valley Police Initiative in Restorative Cautioning. York, UK: York Publishing Services.
Johnson, D. (2002) Lighting the Way: Reconciliation Stories. Sydney: The Federation Press.
Jordens, C. (2002) Reading spoken stories for values: a discursive study of cancer survivors and their professional carers. PhD Thesis (Medicine), University of Sydney.
Jordens, C. and Little, M. (2004) ‘In this scenario, I do this, for these reasons’: narrative, genre and ethical reasoning in the clinic. Social Science & Medicine 58: 1635–1645.
Jordens, C. F. C., Little, M., Paul, K. and Sayers, E.-J. (2001) Life disruption and generic complexity: a social linguistic analysis of narratives of cancer illness. Social Science & Medicine 53: 1227–1236.
Labov, W. (1972) The transformation of experience in narrative syntax. Language in the Inner City 354–396. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press.
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Palk, G., Hayes, H. and Prenzler, T. (1998) Restorative justice and community conferencing: summary of findings from a pilot study. Current Issues in Criminal Justice 10(2): 125–137.
Plum, G. (1988) Text and Contextual Conditioning in Spoken English: A Genre-based approach. Vols 1 and 2. (Monographs in Systemic Linguistics.) Nottingham: Department of English Studies, University of Nottingham.
Retzinger, S. and Scheff, T. (1996) Strategy for community conferences: emotions and social bonds. In B. Galaway and J. Hudson (eds) Restorative Justice: International Perspectives 315–336. Monsey, NJ: Criminal Justice Press.
Rothery, J. (1994) Exploring Literacy in School English (Write it Right Resources for Literacy and Learning). Sydney: Metropolitan East Disadvantaged Schools Program.
Rothery, J. and Stenglin, M. (1997) Entertaining and instructing: exploring experience through story. In F. Christie and J. R. Martin (eds) Genre and Institutions: Social Processes in the Workplace and School 231–263. London: Pinter.
Rothery, J. and Stenglin, M. (2000) Interpreting literature: the role of appraisal. In L. Unsworth (ed.) Researching Language in Schools and Communities 222–244. London: Cassell.
Russell, E. (2004) The Shack that Dad Built. Sydney: Little Hare Books.
Strang, H., Barnes, G., Braithwaite, J. and Sherman, L. (1999) Experiments in Restorative Policing: A Progress Report on the Canberra Reintegrative Shaming Experiments (RISE). Canberra: Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University.
Strang, H. and Braithwaite, J. (eds) (2001) Restorative Justice and Civil Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Trimboli, L. (2000) An Evaluation of the NSW Youth Justice Conferencing Scheme. Sydney: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.
Van Ness, D., Morris, A. and Maxwell, G. (2001) Introducing restorative justice. In A. Morris and G. Maxwell (eds) Restorative Justice for Juveniles: Conferencing, Mediation and Circles 3–16. Oxford and Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing.
Van Stokkom, B. (2002) Moral emotions in restorative justice conferences: managing shame, designing empathy. Theoretical Criminology 6(3): 339–360.
Weitekamp, E. (1999) The history of restorative justice. In G. Bazemore and L. Walgrave (eds) Restorative Juvenile Justice: Repairing the Harm of Youth Crime 75–102. Monsey, NJ: Criminal Justice Press.
Zappavigna, M., Dwyer, P. and Martin, J. (2007) ‘Just like sort of guilty kind of’: The Rhetoric of Tempered Admission in Youth Justice Conferencing. Proceedings of Australian Systemic Functional Linguistics Congress, Woollongong. http://www.asfla.org.au/ category/asfla2007/
Zappavigna, M., Dwyer, P. and Martin, J. (2008) Syndromes of meaning: exploring patterned coupling in a NSW Youth Justice Conference. In A. Mahboob and K. Knight (eds) Questioning Linguistics. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Blagg, H. (2008) Crime, Aboriginality and the Decolonisation of Justice. Sydney: Hawkins Press.
Braithwaite, J. (1989) Crime, Shame and Reintegration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Braithwaite, J. (1997) Restorative justice and a better future. The Dalhousie Review 76(1): 9–31.
Bringing Them Home: National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families. (1997) Sydney: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.
Christie, F. and Martin, J. R. (eds) (1997) Genre and Institutions: Social Processes in the Workplace and School. (Open Linguistics Series.) London: Pinter.
Cuneen, C. (2002) Restorative justice and the politics of decolonization. In E. Weitekamp and H.-J. Kerner (eds) Restorative Justice: Theoretical Foundations 32–49. Cullompton, UK: Willan Publishing.
Daly, K. (2001) Conferencing in Australia and New Zealand: variations, research findings, and prospects. In A. Morris and G. Maxwell (eds) Restorative Justice for Juveniles: Conferencing, Mediation and Circles. Oxford and Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing. 59–83.
Eggins, S. and Slade, D. (1997) Analysing Casual Conversation. London: Cassell. (Republished 2005 Equinox.)
Halliday, M. A. K. (1976) Anti-languages. American Anthropologist 78(3): 570–584. (Reprinted in M. A. K. Halliday 2007 Language and Society 265–286. Vol. 10 in The Collected Works of M. A. K. Halliday edited by J. J. Webster. London: Continuum).
Harris, N, L. Walgrave and Braithwaite, J. (2004) Emotional dynamics in restorative conferences. Theoretical Criminology 8(2): 191–210.
Hayes, H. (2006) Apologies and accounts in youth justice conferencing. Contemporary Justice Review 9(4): 369–385.
Hoyle, C., Young, R. and Hill, R. (2002) Proceed with Caution: An Evaluation of the Thames Valley Police Initiative in Restorative Cautioning. York, UK: York Publishing Services.
Johnson, D. (2002) Lighting the Way: Reconciliation Stories. Sydney: The Federation Press.
Jordens, C. (2002) Reading spoken stories for values: a discursive study of cancer survivors and their professional carers. PhD Thesis (Medicine), University of Sydney.
Jordens, C. and Little, M. (2004) ‘In this scenario, I do this, for these reasons’: narrative, genre and ethical reasoning in the clinic. Social Science & Medicine 58: 1635–1645.
Jordens, C. F. C., Little, M., Paul, K. and Sayers, E.-J. (2001) Life disruption and generic complexity: a social linguistic analysis of narratives of cancer illness. Social Science & Medicine 53: 1227–1236.
Labov, W. (1972) The transformation of experience in narrative syntax. Language in the Inner City 354–396. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press.
Labov, W. (1982) Speech actions and reactions in personal narrative. In D. Tannen (ed.) Analysing Discourse: Text and Talk. (Georgetown University Round Table on Language and Linguistics 1981.) Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Labov, W. (1984) Intensity. In D. Schiffrin (ed.) Meaning, Form, and Use in Context: Linguistic Applications 43–70. (Georgetown University Roundtable on Language and Linguistics.) Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Labov, W. and Waletzky, J. (1967) Narrative analysis: oral versions of personal experience. In J. Helm (ed.) Essays on the Verbal and Visual Arts 12–44. (Proceedings of the 1966 Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society.) Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Martin, J. R. and Plum, G. A. (1997) Construing experience: some story genres. Journal of Narrative and Life History 7(1–4): 299–308.
Martin, J. R. and Rose, D. (2008) Genre Relations: Mapping Culture. London: Equinox.
Martin, J. R. and White, P. R. R. (2005) The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. London: Palgrave.
Maxwell, G. and Morris, A. (1993) Family, Victims and Culture: Youth Justice in New Zealand. Wellington: Social Policy Agency and the Institute of Criminology, Victoria University.
Moore, D. and McDonald, J. (2000) Transforming Conflict in Workplaces and other Communities. Sydney: Transformative Justice Australia.
Moore, D. and McDonald, J. (2001) Community conferencing as a special case of conflict transformation. In H. Strang and J. Braithwaite (eds) Restorative Justice and Civil Society 130–148. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Morgan, S. (1987) My Place. Freemantle, WA: Freemantle Arts Centre Press.
Muntigl, P. (2004) Narrative Counselling: Social and Linguistic Processes of Change. (Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture.) Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Palk, G., Hayes, H. and Prenzler, T. (1998) Restorative justice and community conferencing: summary of findings from a pilot study. Current Issues in Criminal Justice 10(2): 125–137.
Plum, G. (1988) Text and Contextual Conditioning in Spoken English: A Genre-based approach. Vols 1 and 2. (Monographs in Systemic Linguistics.) Nottingham: Department of English Studies, University of Nottingham.
Retzinger, S. and Scheff, T. (1996) Strategy for community conferences: emotions and social bonds. In B. Galaway and J. Hudson (eds) Restorative Justice: International Perspectives 315–336. Monsey, NJ: Criminal Justice Press.
Rothery, J. (1994) Exploring Literacy in School English (Write it Right Resources for Literacy and Learning). Sydney: Metropolitan East Disadvantaged Schools Program.
Rothery, J. and Stenglin, M. (1997) Entertaining and instructing: exploring experience through story. In F. Christie and J. R. Martin (eds) Genre and Institutions: Social Processes in the Workplace and School 231–263. London: Pinter.
Rothery, J. and Stenglin, M. (2000) Interpreting literature: the role of appraisal. In L. Unsworth (ed.) Researching Language in Schools and Communities 222–244. London: Cassell.
Russell, E. (2004) The Shack that Dad Built. Sydney: Little Hare Books.
Strang, H., Barnes, G., Braithwaite, J. and Sherman, L. (1999) Experiments in Restorative Policing: A Progress Report on the Canberra Reintegrative Shaming Experiments (RISE). Canberra: Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University.
Strang, H. and Braithwaite, J. (eds) (2001) Restorative Justice and Civil Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Trimboli, L. (2000) An Evaluation of the NSW Youth Justice Conferencing Scheme. Sydney: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.
Van Ness, D., Morris, A. and Maxwell, G. (2001) Introducing restorative justice. In A. Morris and G. Maxwell (eds) Restorative Justice for Juveniles: Conferencing, Mediation and Circles 3–16. Oxford and Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing.
Van Stokkom, B. (2002) Moral emotions in restorative justice conferences: managing shame, designing empathy. Theoretical Criminology 6(3): 339–360.
Weitekamp, E. (1999) The history of restorative justice. In G. Bazemore and L. Walgrave (eds) Restorative Juvenile Justice: Repairing the Harm of Youth Crime 75–102. Monsey, NJ: Criminal Justice Press.
Zappavigna, M., Dwyer, P. and Martin, J. (2007) ‘Just like sort of guilty kind of’: The Rhetoric of Tempered Admission in Youth Justice Conferencing. Proceedings of Australian Systemic Functional Linguistics Congress, Woollongong. http://www.asfla.org.au/ category/asfla2007/
Zappavigna, M., Dwyer, P. and Martin, J. (2008) Syndromes of meaning: exploring patterned coupling in a NSW Youth Justice Conference. In A. Mahboob and K. Knight (eds) Questioning Linguistics. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Published
2010-02-03
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Martin, J. R., Zappavigna, M., & Dwyer, P. (2010). Negotiating narrative: Story structure and identity in youth justice conferencing. Linguistics and the Human Sciences, 3(2), 221-253. https://doi.org/10.1558/lhs.v3i2.221
