Discursive neutralization in Chinese community corrections: A linguistic analysis of blame avoidance in institutional discourse

Abstract

Offense narratives influence offenders’ responsibility perceptions and reintegration prospects. A key strategy in this process is neutralization, wherein offenders reinterpret offences to mitigate guilt and avoid blame. Although neutralization has been widely discussed in criminology, its linguistic realization remains underexplored. Drawing on fieldwork in community corrections, this study analyzes transcribed risk-assessment interactions between offenders and judicial social workers. Adopting a rank-based approach, it identifies how neutralization strategies are realized across exchanges and moves. Results reveal that offenders condense the discursive space for negotiating offence in eliciting exchanges, while expand it in narrating exchanges to recontextualize offence narratives and reframe responsibility. These insights advance applied linguistics by demonstrating how linguistic choices in institutional interactions shape responsibility negotiation and social reintegration.