{"title":"“我已经控制了这么多”:谈论监狱暴力","authors":"Jingrui Guo","doi":"10.1177/09579265231178230","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Prison violence has been considered a threat to not only the safety of inmates, staff, and visitors but the day-to-day functioning of the prisons, and therefore is strictly forbidden and immediately punished. However, some inmates still turn to violence, which raises doubts about whether these inmates are naturally violent and impossible to change. This paper, based on in-depth interviews with 27 inmates who have committed violence and remained in solitary confinement in prisons in Zhejiang Province, China, examines how the inmates make sense of and describe their violent experiences. It is found that these inmates make efforts to construct their victims as deserving, acts as controlled, and punishment as acceptable through employing discursive strategies such as resorting to traditional values, conditional sentences, and repetition. In so doing, these inmates seek to redefine who they are not, how they should not be treated and what prison life should not be like. This paper could open up ways of better understanding why violence could be reduced but impossible to be eliminated completely in the prison context.","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":"34 1","pages":"691 - 711"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4000,"publicationDate":"2023-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"‘I have controlled so much’: Discourse of prison violence\",\"authors\":\"Jingrui Guo\",\"doi\":\"10.1177/09579265231178230\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"Prison violence has been considered a threat to not only the safety of inmates, staff, and visitors but the day-to-day functioning of the prisons, and therefore is strictly forbidden and immediately punished. However, some inmates still turn to violence, which raises doubts about whether these inmates are naturally violent and impossible to change. This paper, based on in-depth interviews with 27 inmates who have committed violence and remained in solitary confinement in prisons in Zhejiang Province, China, examines how the inmates make sense of and describe their violent experiences. It is found that these inmates make efforts to construct their victims as deserving, acts as controlled, and punishment as acceptable through employing discursive strategies such as resorting to traditional values, conditional sentences, and repetition. In so doing, these inmates seek to redefine who they are not, how they should not be treated and what prison life should not be like. This paper could open up ways of better understanding why violence could be reduced but impossible to be eliminated completely in the prison context.\",\"PeriodicalId\":47965,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"Discourse & Society\",\"volume\":\"34 1\",\"pages\":\"691 - 711\"},\"PeriodicalIF\":2.4000,\"publicationDate\":\"2023-06-06\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"0\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"Discourse & Society\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"98\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265231178230\",\"RegionNum\":1,\"RegionCategory\":\"文学\",\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"Q1\",\"JCRName\":\"COMMUNICATION\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Discourse & Society","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265231178230","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
‘I have controlled so much’: Discourse of prison violence
Prison violence has been considered a threat to not only the safety of inmates, staff, and visitors but the day-to-day functioning of the prisons, and therefore is strictly forbidden and immediately punished. However, some inmates still turn to violence, which raises doubts about whether these inmates are naturally violent and impossible to change. This paper, based on in-depth interviews with 27 inmates who have committed violence and remained in solitary confinement in prisons in Zhejiang Province, China, examines how the inmates make sense of and describe their violent experiences. It is found that these inmates make efforts to construct their victims as deserving, acts as controlled, and punishment as acceptable through employing discursive strategies such as resorting to traditional values, conditional sentences, and repetition. In so doing, these inmates seek to redefine who they are not, how they should not be treated and what prison life should not be like. This paper could open up ways of better understanding why violence could be reduced but impossible to be eliminated completely in the prison context.
期刊介绍:
Discourse & Society is a multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal whose major aim is to publish outstanding research at the boundaries of discourse analysis and the social sciences. It focuses on explicit theory formation and analysis of the relationships between the structures of text, talk, language use, verbal interaction or communication, on the one hand, and societal, political or cultural micro- and macrostructures and cognitive social representations, on the other hand. That is, D&S studies society through discourse and discourse through an analysis of its socio-political and cultural functions or implications. Its contributions are based on advanced theory formation and methodologies of several disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.