TY - JOUR

T1 - Joke or threat?

T2 - Competing genre uptakes in a Danish court case

AU - Bojsen-Møller, Marie

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - This article examines a Danish criminal case concerning a high school student who posted a picture on Instagram with the caption ‘I’ll be the nextschool shooter guys, lmao, watch out’ (Danish: jeg bliver den næste schoolshooter guys, lmao, watch out). Reactions to – or uptakes on (Freadman,1994, 2002) – the Instagram post were split between two types; some tookit as a threat and some took it as a joke. Building on theory on threatening communications (e.g. Bojsen-Møller, Auken, Devitt, & Christensen, 2020;Fraser, 1998; T. Gales, 2019; Solan & Tiersma, 2005), on humor (Billig, 2005;Norrick, 2010; Tsakona, 2017) and on genre theory (Devitt, 2009; Freadman,2012, 2020; Miller, 1984), this article studies the diverging uptakes as they arepresented within the court case through examination of both transcripts ofaudio recordings from the court room and court documents. The findingsof this study show that while linguistic interpretation is mostly limited tothe netcronym ‘lmao’, other non-linguistic behaviors are often used as justification for a particular interpretation of the linguistic behavior. Not onlythe prosecuted utterance itself, but also the utterances’ uptakes, i.e. an essential aspect of its context, have a bearing on the outcome of the case andthe assessment of the defendant’s intent. As such, this study offers importantinsight into an area that T. Gales (2019) argues is in need of further interdisciplinary research, namely how contextual features can influence the outcomeof criminal cases concerning disputed threats

AB - This article examines a Danish criminal case concerning a high school student who posted a picture on Instagram with the caption ‘I’ll be the nextschool shooter guys, lmao, watch out’ (Danish: jeg bliver den næste schoolshooter guys, lmao, watch out). Reactions to – or uptakes on (Freadman,1994, 2002) – the Instagram post were split between two types; some tookit as a threat and some took it as a joke. Building on theory on threatening communications (e.g. Bojsen-Møller, Auken, Devitt, & Christensen, 2020;Fraser, 1998; T. Gales, 2019; Solan & Tiersma, 2005), on humor (Billig, 2005;Norrick, 2010; Tsakona, 2017) and on genre theory (Devitt, 2009; Freadman,2012, 2020; Miller, 1984), this article studies the diverging uptakes as they arepresented within the court case through examination of both transcripts ofaudio recordings from the court room and court documents. The findingsof this study show that while linguistic interpretation is mostly limited tothe netcronym ‘lmao’, other non-linguistic behaviors are often used as justification for a particular interpretation of the linguistic behavior. Not onlythe prosecuted utterance itself, but also the utterances’ uptakes, i.e. an essential aspect of its context, have a bearing on the outcome of the case andthe assessment of the defendant’s intent. As such, this study offers importantinsight into an area that T. Gales (2019) argues is in need of further interdisciplinary research, namely how contextual features can influence the outcomeof criminal cases concerning disputed threats

M3 - Journal article

VL - 10

JO - Language and Law / Linguagem e Direito

JF - Language and Law / Linguagem e Direito

IS - 1

ER -