29.3405, Review: Discourse Analysis; Sociolinguistics: Galasinski (2017)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-29-3405. Wed Sep 05 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.3405, Review: Discourse Analysis; Sociolinguistics: Galasinski (2017)

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Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2018 15:03:42
From: Elizabeth Wright [ewr225 at g.uky.edu]
Subject: Discourses of Men's Suicide Notes

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/28/28-4397.html

AUTHOR: Dariusz  Galasinski
TITLE: Discourses of Men's Suicide Notes
SUBTITLE: A Qualitative Analysis
SERIES TITLE: Bloomsbury Advances in Critical Discourse Studies
PUBLISHER: Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group)
YEAR: 2017

REVIEWER: Elizabeth M Wright, University of Kentucky

SUMMARY

Galasiński’s “Discourses of Men’s Suicide Notes: A Qualitative Analysis”
seeks to elucidate the general discursive landscape and communicative
functions of suicide notes as a genre, and men's suicide notes specifically.
The most important goal of this research monograph is to lay the groundwork
for linguistic analysis of suicide notes and establish an analytical
precedent, as this publication is the first of its kind, to Galasiński’s
knowledge. It primarily identifies narrative structures in suicide notes, how
they are constructed linguistically, and what social factors (e.g.
masculinity, fatherhood, etc) might be driving them. Galasiński focuses much
of his energy on cataloguing and characterizing these thematic structures
necessary for further linguistic analysis. 

Galasiński analyzes notes retrieved from the Polish Corpus of Suicide Notes
(http://www.pcsn.uni.wroc.pl/), which contains 614 suicide notes authored
between 1998 and 2008 (Galasiński 2017:23). Galasiński addresses only the
male authored notes (n=456) in this study. Each chapter explores a central
thematic or narrative element present in the corpus, provides characteristic
excerpts for each, and postulates how the linguistic representation of which
could speak to the state of the author.

The introduction functions mainly to situate the current study ideologically
as it relates to prior literature on suicide and to elucidate the goals of the
book itself. As Galasiński notes that, to his knowledge, this is the first
study of this nature, an as such he aims to 1) identify how men construct the
elements related to suicide linguistically 2) examine subject positions
constructed discursively by the authors and 3) explore the discursive
construction and position of the note itself. A secondary goal of this book is
to challenge (and reject) many theories widely accepted in suicidology and
psychology regarding the purpose, content, and meaning of suicide notes,
instead suggesting that suicide notes operate within a narrative structure and
serve a discursive function that does not necessarily speak to the condition
of the author. 

Chapters 2 and 3 seek to define and explore the portrayal of suicide itself
within the notes. Chapter 2, “The Gift of Suicide: Stories of the Ultimate
Solution,” closely examines one prevalent narrative: suicide constructed as a
gift to family and loved ones. The chapter provides excerpts exemplifying the
characterization of suicide as a gift, of the author as a giver and helper,
and of addressees (typically family and close friends) as benefitting from
this ‘gift’. Chapter 3, “Ambiguities of Suicide: Stories of Reason,” explores
the discursive methods in which authors construct rationality, both within
themselves and of the decision. 

Chapters 4, 5, and 6 look at the discursive construction of suicide itself in
the notes. Chapter 4, “Suicide: The Act Outside of Discourse,” notes that the
act of suicide itself is often elided and not explicitly mentioned in the
notes themselves. Chapter 5, “Men Who Kill Themselves: Identities in Suicide
Notes,” explores possible linguistic expressions, constructions, and
projections of masculinity and fatherhood, finding discursive structures and
narrative themes that parallel many facets of masculinity. Chapter 6, “The
Note: Exercise in Timing,” discusses the construction of the present tense and
reality of the notes.

Chapters 7 and 8 cover the construction and characterization of the future
within the suicide notes. Chapter 7, “See You Later: Non-finality of Suicide,”
explores the discursive construction of suicide as non-finite, with both the
addressees’ lives and the author’s presence often continuing into the future.
In the same vein, Chapter 8, “Instructions: Narratives of Continuing Control,”
examines the possible continued construction of masculine roles into the
future, where the author themselves will not be present.

EVALUATION

I would like to begin my evaluation of Galasiński (2017) by stating that this
research fills an important gap in the current literature on suicide, both in
linguistics and related sociological fields, such as suicidology. It also
seeks to dismantle a number of commonly held assumptions, particularly in the
fields of suicidology and psychology, concerning what a suicide note can tell
researchers about the deceased and what functions suicide notes actually
serve. This book sits at the crossroads of multiple disciplines, and as a
pioneering study for this particular inquiry, it must be able to provide a
base of knowledge in a way that other studies of comparable size and scope do
not. 

By and large, this book completes what it set out to do; it provides
linguistic evidence that contradicts many held assumptions on what suicide
notes contain, what they can say about an author, and on the mental state
preceding the act of suicide itself. While only tangential to linguistics,
these interdisciplinary presuppositions must be addressed before well-founded
work on suicide notes can be entertained and carried out. 

Perhaps this work’s biggest contribution is that it provides an accessible
overview of suicide notes; it catalogues the linguistic forms suicide notes
take, the themes and topics which characterize them, and the apparent roles
they serve (e.g. goodbyes, reassurances, etc). Not only does Galasiński break
down the Polish Corpus of Suicide Notes thematically, he provides varied
examples of what was characteristic of a particular theme, but also what was
atypical of the corpus and what kind of linguistic structures and meanings
were absent from the corpus altogether. He does this for not only linguistic
and discursive constructions (e.g. subject roles, future constructions,
depiction of the act, apology) but also for topics seen in the corpus (e.g.
family, mundanities, money), among other things. This publication gives shape
to the Polish suicide note, its discursive and social role, and what functions
they actually serve for both authors and readers. 

With that said, I believe there are a few underlying issues with the analyses
undertaken in this publication, and by extension, many of the conclusions. Due
to the nature of the research, it must address a number of intersectional
issues and topics, and thus is unable to fully delve into any single topic or
analysis. 

One theoretical concept central to this publication is masculinity; the book
itself is an analysis of men’s suicide notes, and not suicide notes more
broadly. Galasiński calls on masculinity frequently to draw conclusions and
to understand linguistic and thematic elements present in the corpus, and how
they might reflect the author navigating what is, in some understandings, an
inherently emasculating act. For example, he connects the use of imperatives
(e.g. pay off the car loan) to the need to retain familial control, which he
interprets as a performance of masculinity.

However, the analytical structure of the study itself does not allow for
Galasiński to draw any quantifiable conclusions about the construction and
effects of masculinity, nor the degree to which it is present in individual
notes and the corpus as a whole. Galasiński looks only at male-authored
notes, and thus does not establish a baseline of what characterizes Polish
suicide notes more broadly. The study cannot with any certainty claim
causation, as the effects and presence of masculinity are something that is
relative (e.g. male-authored notes use more masculine narratives) and there is
no possible comparison to the larger sample of both male- and female-authored
notes. Many of the features examined and purported as materializations of
masculinity by Galasiński simply cannot be proven as such using this
analytical structure, nor can any idea of the degree to which masculinity
plays a role be gleaned.

In addition, Galasiński does not clearly delineate what masculinity means in
this text. There is no discussion of what masculinity means to Polish men (as
all the notes were penned by this particular demographic), nor of whether
masculinity is constructed and perceived differently in, say, continental
Europe, as most of the theories Galasiński grounds his concept of masculinity
in stem from American scholars who speak mainly of American masculinity (e.g.
Judith Butler). Because masculinity is socially constructed, it is realized
different from culture to culture. There must be some discussion of Polish
masculinity, even if it does not differ in any significant ways from the
gender frameworks Galasiński builds off for the conceptualization of
masculinity present in this text. For example, is suicide perceived as
emasculating in Poland, and might it be perceived differently in Poland than
in the surrounding countries?

Of course, Galasiński’s interpretations should not be discounted; although
the conclusions he draws from the corpus are not verified against the entire
corpus, they just simply need to be grounded in a clearer understanding of
Polish suicide notes. The analyses presented by Galasiński offer important
insight into the possibilities and methods of the performance of masculinity
in suicide notes, likely generalizable across western cultures. 

It should also be noted that the inquiry undertaken here is quite zoomed out;
more often than not, the analyses focus on the presence of narratives or
themes rather than on any particular linguistic constructions or lexical
items. The nature of this work is instead large-scale, focusing on cultural
discourse rather than utterance-level or above discourse analysis. 

Galasiński (2017) is an important publication that lays the foundation for
the future study of suicide notes. It clearly delineates linguistic and
discursive features of the corpus that are characteristic of the genre. More
importantly, as this work presents a comprehensive cataloguing of suicide note
features, it is able to challenge long-held assumptions on the nature and
purpose of the suicide note. Arguing that suicide notes are social texts which
must fill certain roles, they are less insightful for the psychological study
of suicide than previously assumed. While this work does not itself carry out
extensive linguistic inquiry, it does prepare the field for such studies, and
provides a framework within which to work. 

REFERENCES

Galasiński, D., Discourses of Men’s Suicide Notes. London: Bloomsbury, 2017


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Elizabeth Wright is a masters student studying sociolinguistics at the
University of Kentucky. She is currently researching punctuation use in
Twitter as a (socio)linguistic variable. She hopes to pursue a career
researching the mechanics of linguistic variation, particularly in digital
media.





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