Illicit genres

Copenhagen symposium

This symposium focuses on ‘illicit genres’, covering genres that are societally or legally proscribed, such as threats, hate speech, grooming, and types of deception. We bring together experts in genre theory, in forensic linguistics and in practitioner and judicial handling of these different genres.

The approach to genre enveloping this symposium is Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS), an approach that defines genre as “typified rhetorical actions based in recurrent situations” (Miller 1984: 159). Genres are social constructs, and as such, they are (re)constructed, recognized, understood and named - i.e., taken up - by the users of language and genres.

Illicit genres are different from most other genres in that they do not have a conventional structure that is taught in school or represented in books; in short, they are societally unwelcome, and every distinguishing quality they have derives from this fact. The uptakes of illicit genres have a different character than the uptakes of other genres, namely in the form of sanctions and condemnations by society, law enforcement, and the judicial system. The very possibility of this kind of uptake influences the illicit genres themselves, because oftentimes the people who use them will not openly admit to their use. Instead, the uptake communities are the ones who name and describe the genres. An important uptake community for illicit genres is forensic linguists who contribute to uncovering the linguistic patterns and communicative functions of genre instantiations.

Illicit genres are characterized by a dual addressivity of having both an intended audience (the primary recipient) and an unintended audience (e.g. the legal system). Therefore, they will frequently be communicated secretly, anonymously or indirectly. For similar purposes, their users will sometimes claim other, less offensive genre labels for them (for threats, e.g., ‘this is a warning’) or simply anti-label them (for threats, ‘this is not a threat’).

Please contact tkaroli@hum.ku.dk if you wish to partipate.

Monday, Nov 4

Welcome and coffee

9:00-9:15

Introduction. Tanya Karoli-Christensen & Marie Bojsen-Møller

9:15-10:00

Plenary 1. Amy Devitt: When Genres Break Bad: How to See, Name, and Sanction Illicit Communication

10:00-11:00

Break

11:00-11:15

Tammy Gales: Threatening Contexts: An examination of threatening language from linguistic, legal, and law enforcement perspectives

11:15-12:00

Margaret Diekhuis-Kuiper: Risk Assessment-method for Threatening letters | RAT

12:00-12:45

Lunch

12:45-13:45

Karoline Marko: What can the perception of threats tell us about the genre?

13:45-14:30

Lara Waters: When words are a punishable offense – a prosecutor’s perspective on crimes involving language in Danish law

14:30-15:15

Break

15:15-15:30

Plenary 2. Janet Ainsworth: When lies do not count as false statements: The curious world of common law defamation.

15:30-16:30

Tuesday, Nov 5

Coffee

8:45-9:00

Plenary 3. Anne Freadman: Is dog-whistling a genre?

9:00-10:00

Christopher Heffer: Bullshitting v Bullshit: Insincere and Irresponsible Genres

10:00-10:45

Break

10:45-11:00

Predrag Dojcinovic: In the mind of the crime: proving the mens rea of genocidal intent in the words of Ratko Mladić and other members of the joint criminal enterprise

11:00-11:45

Qasam Ijaz & Nadia Qureshi: Hate speech - user-driven data collection and community impact assessment

11:45-12:30

Lunch

12:30-13:45

Tim Grant: Genres and communities of practice in online sex abuse fora

13:15-14:00

Iman Nick: Till Death Do Us Part: A Comparative Mixed Method Analysis of Threatening Letters Written in Cases of Suicide and Murder-Suicide

14:00-14:45

Break

14:45-15:00

Summing up. Sune Auken

15:00-15:45