LINGUISTIC CONSTRUCTION OF OFFENDER, VICTIM AND CRIME IN NEWS STORIES ON CHILD SEX ABUSE: A CRITICAL STYLISTICS ANALYSIS

Abstract

The present study attempts to investigate the representation of ideologies in the news stories on crime in English newspaper of Pakistan which construct offender, victim and crime in child sex abuse cases. The study uses Jefferies’ (2010) Critical Stylistics as a framework which provides a more developed and rigorous set of analytical tools (Tabbert, 2013) in form of a number of textual-conceptual functions. The results obtained through this framework are rigorous, objective and replicable. Child sex abuse (CSA) is becoming a worldwide burning issue and according to Sahil NGO report 2019, the number of CSA victims in Pakistan is increasing. The news stories concerning child sex abuse were collected and analyzed qualitatively. The results indicate that various linguistic devices were used to construct the offender which showed the construction was not neutral. He was termed as a criminal in the news stories before being trialed in the court. However, the authoritative persons termed him as a suspect.  The victim’s construction influenced the offender’s construction as well. The ideologies which construct the victim and crime are perpetuating stereotypes which ultimately arouse sympathies for the victim and aversion for the offender as the offender is constructed as an evil monster that does not have any qualms. The results also demonstrated that nouns naming crime had frequently been used. Crime naming nouns and verbs often occurred with offender naming nouns and victim naming nouns which demonstrated the close proximity among crime, the offender and the victim.