ЛЕКСИЧНИЙ АНАЛІЗ ДИСКУРСУ ПЕРСОНАЖА СЕРІЙНОГО ВБИВЦІ В АМЕРИКАНСЬКІЙ ХУДОЖНІЙ ПРОЗІ ХХ СТОЛІТТЯ

Lexical analysis has always been a productive way to study discourse through the semiotic nature of the word and its ability to function as a link between language and reality. The purpose of the article is to explore the lexical level of the discourse of a serial killer character in order to reveal their psychological features and prove their authenticity in comparison with the lexicon research of real serial killers. This study is relevant because the number of thrillers with serial killers in American literature is growing every year, but the discourse of these characters is poorly studied and requires more attention from linguists. The article uses such research methods as the method of lexical and semantic analysis of language units to study the features of language nominations; method of semantic fields, for grouping language units according to their thematic affiliation in microfields; associative method for the distribution of language units to the corresponding microfields; structural method for the separation of units, their classification and interpretation.Results. In the process of lexical analysis of the discourse of the serial killers characters, the words of the characters were divided into three main groups: words denoting mental activity, psychological needs, physiological activity and security. These groups were divided into semantic fields in order to facilitate the process of research. The analysis showed that the largest group of words in most discourses (except for two characters) is a group denoting physiological activity and safety, which corresponds to a study of the lexicon of real serial killers conducted by J. Hancock, which shows that the most important for the life of serial killers is biological component. The lexicon of the two characters (Lecturer and Claiborne), which differ from others by the predominance of words denoting mental activity, can be explained by their high educational and professional level, which shows their high IQ, which is also a feature of real serial killers.Thus, we can conclude that the authors were able to portray the characters plausibly through their lexicon.Key words: discourse, lexicon, semantic field, term, character. Лексичний аналіз завжди був продуктивним способом вивчення дискурсу через семіотичну природу слова та його здатність функціонувати як сполучна ланка між мовою та реальністю. Ця стаття має на меті дослідити лексичний рівень дискурсу персонажа серійного вбивці, щоб розкрити його психологічні особливості та довести достовірність та правдоподібність змалювання його образу в порівнянні з дослідженнями лексикону справжніх серійних убивць. Таке дослідження є актуальним, оскільки в американській літературі з кожним роком зростає кількість трилерів, де ключовими фігурами є серійні вбивці, а от дискурс цих персонажів є маловивченим і вимагає більшої уваги лінгвістів.У статті використані такі методи дослідження, як метод лексико-семантичного аналізу мовних одиниць для вивчення особливостей мовних номінацій; метод семантичних полів, для групування мов-них одиниць за їх тематичною приналежністю в мікрополя; асоціативний метод для розподілу мовних одиниць до відповідних мікрополів; структурний метод для виокремлення одиниць, їх класифікації та інтерпретації.Результати. У процесі лексичного аналізу дискурсу персонажів серійних вбивць слова персонажів було розділено на три основні групи: слова, що позначають розумову діяльність, психологічні потреби, фізіологічну активність та безпеку. Ці групи були поділені на семантичні поля, щоб полегшити процес вивчення. Аналіз показав, що найбільша група слів у більшості дискурсів (крім двох персонажів) – це група, що позначає фізіологічну активність та безпеку, що відповідає дослідженню лексикону справжніх серійних вбивць, проведеному Дж. Хенкоком, яке показує, що найважливішим для життя серійних вбивць є біологічний компонент. Лексикон двох персонажів (Лектор і Клейборн), що відрізняються від інших перевагою слів, які позначають розумову діяльність, можна пояснити їхнім високим освітнім та професійним рівнем. Це засвідчує їхній високий коефіцієнт інтелекту, що також є особливістю справжніх серійних вбивць.Отже, можна зробити висновки, що авторам вдалося зобразити портрети персонажів правдоподібно через їх лексикон, що співвідноситься з дослідженнями лексикону реальних серійних вбивць. Завдяки лексичному аналізу дискурсу вдалося розкрити психологічні особливості характерів персонажів.Ключові слова: дискурс, лексикон, семантичне поле, термін, персонаж.

Toronto’s Little Shop Of Horrors: A Cultural Criminology Examination On Serial Killer Bruce McArthur And The News Media

<div>Contributing to the dynamic and interdisciplinary field of cultural criminology, this project works to emphasize the destructive, modern forces of consumerism and violence within Toronto’s crime-news industry. The paper fuses the canonical and emerging methodologies of content analysis, discourse analysis, and liquid ethnography, to evaluate the framing and editing techniques used to relay the story of Bruce McArthur’s predations in The Village (over the 2018 news year). A sample of 365 articles, retrieved from five print media sources, are methodically examined to understand both the local and national agenda-setting strategies of contemporary journalism. Actively contributing to the transformation of human suffering and violence into mass-market pleasure, a carnival of crime model (Presdee, 2000) serves as a primary lens for evaluating the hyper-sensationalized reporting styles of modern news makers. Weaving theoretical contributions from the fields of sociology and media studies, the embeddedness of heteronormative, racialized, and ethnocentric tropes common to the news and crime-infotainment industries is also critically evaluated towards raising greater political and social accountability. Crime-centric podcasts are further identified as a leading technological medium for fueling public obsessions with murder and transgressions. Formed by enthusiastic hobbyists and motivated journalists, the producers of podcasting content hastily straddle the realms of entertainment and information sharing. As such, this research calls for immediate awareness and tending to the neoliberal symptoms of boredom and fear existing in our modern world, building on Stanley Cohen’s (1972) moral panic theory.</div><div><br></div><div>Keywords: cultural criminology, serial killer, news media, crime infotainment, McArthur<br></div>

More than an offender location tool: Geographic profiling and body deposition

In homicide cases, it is difficult to provide resolution for the bereaved or to obtain a successful criminal conviction of the guilty party when no body is found. Since the mid-nineteenth century, geographic and environmental patterns have been used to better understand the relationship between crime and its environment. Now known as geographic profiling, practitioners in this field amalgamate criminological, psychological, and geographical knowledge, as well as aspects of mathematics, statistics, and physics to identify spatial patterns associated with criminal behaviour as a means of locating anchor points of an offender (where they live, or work). The same techniques can also be used to locate the covert body deposition sites of their victims. This paper aims to (1) provide a brief summary of criminal behaviour and the environment and how understanding their relationship can be helpful to geographic profiling, (2) amalgamate the available literature on the application of geographic profiling in locating clandestine graves (as most documented uses are to locate offender residences), and (3) include a geographic profile of Ivan Milat, an Australian serial killer (officially) active from 1989 to 1992, demonstrating how geographic profiling techniques can help to identify additional victims and potential body deposition sites. The information in this review will be helpful to law enforcement and practitioners to improve missing persons investigations and searches for clandestine graves.

Toronto’s Little Shop Of Horrors: A Cultural Criminology Examination On Serial Killer Bruce McArthur And The News Media

<div>Contributing to the dynamic and interdisciplinary field of cultural criminology, this project works to emphasize the destructive, modern forces of consumerism and violence within Toronto’s crime-news industry. The paper fuses the canonical and emerging methodologies of content analysis, discourse analysis, and liquid ethnography, to evaluate the framing and editing techniques used to relay the story of Bruce McArthur’s predations in The Village (over the 2018 news year). A sample of 365 articles, retrieved from five print media sources, are methodically examined to understand both the local and national agenda-setting strategies of contemporary journalism. Actively contributing to the transformation of human suffering and violence into mass-market pleasure, a carnival of crime model (Presdee, 2000) serves as a primary lens for evaluating the hyper-sensationalized reporting styles of modern news makers. Weaving theoretical contributions from the fields of sociology and media studies, the embeddedness of heteronormative, racialized, and ethnocentric tropes common to the news and crime-infotainment industries is also critically evaluated towards raising greater political and social accountability. Crime-centric podcasts are further identified as a leading technological medium for fueling public obsessions with murder and transgressions. Formed by enthusiastic hobbyists and motivated journalists, the producers of podcasting content hastily straddle the realms of entertainment and information sharing. As such, this research calls for immediate awareness and tending to the neoliberal symptoms of boredom and fear existing in our modern world, building on Stanley Cohen’s (1972) moral panic theory.</div><div><br></div><div>Keywords: cultural criminology, serial killer, news media, crime infotainment, McArthur<br></div>

Literary Serial Killer Fiction: The Evolution of a Genre

<p>This study examines the dynamics of post-war American serial killer fiction as it relates to social and literary contexts. In the context of history and development, this study considers the impact and origins of particular works and how they have influenced the stylistic and thematic evolution of a particular subgenre I have called literary serial killer fiction. Emphasis is placed on select narratives that directly (or indirectly) transform, challenge and critique the genre conventions in which they are written. Of interest is the evolution of general serial killer fiction as a postmodern phenomenon, in terms of its popularity with the reading public, and in line with the growth of media interest in representations of serial killers. I draw on literary theory (in particular, ‘new historicism’) to demonstrate that the appeal and tropes of serial killer fiction reflect socio-political interests indicative of the era from where they were produced, and to show how the subgenre of literary serial killer fiction can be categorized using its own particular set of defining features. I examine these aspects in detail in relation to the following selection of fictional serial-killer narratives: Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me, James Ellroy’s Killer on the Road, and Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho. For brevity’s sake, I have selected American narrative works that employ first-person narration and are transgressive in the way they focus on characters who defy convention and push boundaries, as do the narratives within larger genre traditions and protocols. In my view, these works are the purest examples of literary serial killer fiction in that they are characteristically unlike other examples that can easily be categorised under other literary genres. The appeal and popularity of the genre, alongside the functional aspects of the trope, leads me to conclude that it is an ideal form to interact with popular cultural narratives, while also allowing subversive interplay between both real and fictional concerns. The appeal of the genre to those authors who usually write outside of it, particularly in regard to its transgressive and allegorical qualities, is also of particular interest to this study. Because of the hybrid nature of the genre and the ease with which the central trope of the fictional serial killer transcends genres, the resulting possibilities provide a transgressive outlet for authors who wish to test boundaries, in both a literary and an ontological sense, in regard to the commentary serial killer fiction allows on the state of contemporary American literature and society.</p>

Film and Video Censorship in New Zealand, 1976-1994

<p>This thesis is an historical analysis of cinema and video censorship in New Zealand focusing on the period from 1976 to 1994. This is bookended by two significant changes in censorship legislation: the introduction of the concept of “injurious to the public good” as the guiding principle for film censorship in 1976, and the consolidation of censorship of film, video and other publications under one censorship authority in 1993 legislation (which came into force in 1994). My theoretical approach can be broadly classified as institutionalist political economy. The emphasis is on what Des Freedman regards as the “deeply political” nature of media policy development and implementation¹, as well as the role of many key actors, including politicians and civil servants, but also lobbyists and pressure groups, and “the importance of informal as well as formal modes of policy behaviour”.² Also, rather than simply looking at censorship decisions as the work of individuals, I have examined the way in which, as B. Guy Peters notes, “structures persist while individual members of those structures come and go”, and that “structures (institutions) create more regularity of human behaviour than would otherwise exist”.³ Rather than attempting to provide an exhaustive narrative of film censorship during this period, the focus is on detailed case studies of individual films which were the subject of censorship controversy in New Zealand, including Last Tango in Paris, Mad Max, Life of Brian, I Spit on Your Grave, Hail Mary and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. As these were contentious decisions, with a number of different voices competing for discursive legitimacy, they help to illustrate what Annette Kuhn describes as the idea of censorship as “a matter of relations…a process, not an object”, emphasising “the interactions between the various institutional practices involved….the relations between them, the ensemble of practices condensed in any one instance of film censorship”.⁴ These case studies also provide significant insight into the decision-making process of the film censors, demonstrating that this goes far beyond “objective” judgements about the manifest content of the films, and into more contentious and subjective areas such as the perceived tone of films (how they present certain content, rather than simply the content itself), views on media effects, the imagined audience, and the wider societal context. The decisions made by the censors depend very much on how these various factors are weighed, and which are given the most importance in the decision-making process. I have also examined the operation of formal home video censorship in New Zealand, which was introduced in 1987, taking a broader approach rather than focusing on individual film case studies, as no individual videos resulted in the level of controversy or media coverage as the film case studies. ¹ Des Freedman, The Politics of Media Policy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008), 1. ² Ibid., 217. ³ B. Guy Peters, “Institutional theory: problems and prospects.” In Debating institutionalism, edited by Jon Pierre, B. Guy Peters and Gerry Stoker (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), 6. ⁴ Annette Kuhn, Cinema, censorship, and sexuality, 1909-1925 (London: Routledge, 1988), 127.</p>

Film and Video Censorship in New Zealand, 1976-1994

<p>This thesis is an historical analysis of cinema and video censorship in New Zealand focusing on the period from 1976 to 1994. This is bookended by two significant changes in censorship legislation: the introduction of the concept of “injurious to the public good” as the guiding principle for film censorship in 1976, and the consolidation of censorship of film, video and other publications under one censorship authority in 1993 legislation (which came into force in 1994). My theoretical approach can be broadly classified as institutionalist political economy. The emphasis is on what Des Freedman regards as the “deeply political” nature of media policy development and implementation¹, as well as the role of many key actors, including politicians and civil servants, but also lobbyists and pressure groups, and “the importance of informal as well as formal modes of policy behaviour”.² Also, rather than simply looking at censorship decisions as the work of individuals, I have examined the way in which, as B. Guy Peters notes, “structures persist while individual members of those structures come and go”, and that “structures (institutions) create more regularity of human behaviour than would otherwise exist”.³ Rather than attempting to provide an exhaustive narrative of film censorship during this period, the focus is on detailed case studies of individual films which were the subject of censorship controversy in New Zealand, including Last Tango in Paris, Mad Max, Life of Brian, I Spit on Your Grave, Hail Mary and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. As these were contentious decisions, with a number of different voices competing for discursive legitimacy, they help to illustrate what Annette Kuhn describes as the idea of censorship as “a matter of relations…a process, not an object”, emphasising “the interactions between the various institutional practices involved….the relations between them, the ensemble of practices condensed in any one instance of film censorship”.⁴ These case studies also provide significant insight into the decision-making process of the film censors, demonstrating that this goes far beyond “objective” judgements about the manifest content of the films, and into more contentious and subjective areas such as the perceived tone of films (how they present certain content, rather than simply the content itself), views on media effects, the imagined audience, and the wider societal context. The decisions made by the censors depend very much on how these various factors are weighed, and which are given the most importance in the decision-making process. I have also examined the operation of formal home video censorship in New Zealand, which was introduced in 1987, taking a broader approach rather than focusing on individual film case studies, as no individual videos resulted in the level of controversy or media coverage as the film case studies. ¹ Des Freedman, The Politics of Media Policy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008), 1. ² Ibid., 217. ³ B. Guy Peters, “Institutional theory: problems and prospects.” In Debating institutionalism, edited by Jon Pierre, B. Guy Peters and Gerry Stoker (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), 6. ⁴ Annette Kuhn, Cinema, censorship, and sexuality, 1909-1925 (London: Routledge, 1988), 127.</p>