Normalizing incarceration: an examination of an incarcerated mother’s letters to her daughter

The communication between incarcerated individuals and their families—in this case, the relationship maintained through letters between an incarcerated mother and her daughter—is paramount for communication research due to the social, emotional, and economic disruption incarceration causes families. Given the prevalence of incarceration in the United States, it is important to understand what the communicative acts used in the letters from Sue to her daughter tell us about the importance of family support and relationships during incarceration. I explore how an incarcerated mother uses several repeated communicative acts to normalize her life of incarceration to her family using a grounded theory approach. Analyzing the communicative acts within the letters sent while in prison provides a natural, realistic, and noninvasive representation of how families maintain their relationships while incarcerated given their limited means of communication. These communicative acts related to normalizing incarceration align with the crafting normalcy component of the communication theory of resilience, which explains how people make sense of their new lives after they experience trauma or disruption, such as incarceration. While the theory typically focuses on resilience after a traumatic event, the findings illustrate the presence of resilience during a traumatic event as well.