Abstract
This chapter focuses on the ways that newspaper producers and readers represented the Italian justice system and its criminal procedure through the various phases of Amanda Knox’s arrest, trial, conviction, acquittal, and retrial (in absentia). Specifically, it considers how news readers textually interacted with and reacted to articles dealing with the case through the online comment function. The work aims to demonstrate how text producers (the media and text commenters) selectively recontextualise and possibly transform elements of the case based on previous versions recounted by the media. A quantitative analysis exploits tools from Corpus Linguistics in order to determine the specific legal lexical representations in a number of different corpora of both newspaper articles and comments from different periods of the case.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Amodio, E. (2004). The accusatorial system lost and regained: Reforming criminal procedure in Italy. American Journal of Comparative Law, 53, 489–500.
Annunziato, S. (2011). The Amanda Knox case: The representation of Italy in American media coverage. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 31(1), 61–78.
Associated Press (2010). Amanda Knox appeal opens in Italy. The Guardian, 24 November. Retrieved 27 September 2015 from http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/nov/24/amanda-knox-appeal-opens-italy
Baker, P. (2006). Using corpora in discourse analysis. London: Continuum.
Baker, P. (2012). Acceptable bias? Using Corpus Linguistics methods with Critical Discourse Analysis. Critical Discourse Studies, 9(3), 247–256.
Baker, P., Gabrielatos, C., KhosraviNik, M., Krzyzanowski, M., McEnery, T., & Wodak, R. (2008). A useful methodological synergy? Combining Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to examine discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press. Discourse & Society, 19(3), 273–306.
Baker, P., Hardy, A., & McEnery, T. (2006). A glossary of Corpus Linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Barthel, M. (2015). Newspapers: Fact sheet. Pew Internet & American Life Project, 29 April. Retrieved 15 September 2015 from http://www.journalism.org/2015/04/29/newspapers-fact-sheet/
Bell, A. (1991). The language of news media. London: Blackwell.
Bhatia, V. (2010). Specification in legislative writing: Accessibility, transparency, power and control. In M. Coulthard & A. Johnson (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of Forensic Linguistics (pp. 37–50). London: Routledge.
Blommaert, J. (2005). Discourse: A critical introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Boyd, M. S. (2013). Representation of foreign justice in the media: The Amanda Knox case. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines, 7(1), 33–50. Retrieved 23 September 2015 from http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/journals/cadaad/wp-content/ uploads /2015/04/Volume-7_Boyd.pdf
Boyd, M. S. (2014). Participation and recontextualization in new media: Political discourse analysis and YouTube. In B. Kaal, I. Maks, & A. van Elfrinkhof (Eds.), From text to political position: Text analysis across disciplines (pp. 243–296). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Boyd, M. S., & Walbaum Robinson, I. A. (2015). Text commenting in mediatised legal discourse: Evaluating reader understanding of (International) Criminal Law. International Journal of Law, Language & Discourse, 5(1), 1–37 Retrieved 20 September 2016 from http://www.ijlld.com/2015-index/.
Cao, D. (2007). Translating law. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Catenaccio, P., Cotter, C., De Smedt, M., Garzone, G., Jacobs, G., Macgilchrist, F., et al. (2011). Towards a linguistics of news production. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(7), 1843–1852.
Chilton, P. (2004). Analysing political discourse: Theory and practice. London/New York: Routledge.
Cotterill, J. (2002). “Just one more time”: Aspects of intertextuality in the trials of O.J. Simpson. In J. Cotterill (Ed.), Language in the legal process (pp. 147–161). Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Elrich, S. (2012). Text trajectories, legal discourse and gendered inequalities. Applied Linguistics Review, 3(1), 47–73.
Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Fairclough, N. (1995). Media discourse. London/New York: E. Arnold.
Fairclough, N. (2010). Critical Discourse Analysis: The critical study of language. Harlow: Longman.
Fairclough, N., & Wodak, R. (1997). Critical Discourse Analysis. In T. A. Van Dijk (Ed.), Introduction to discourse studies (pp. 258–284). London: Sage.
Fetzer, A., & Johansson, M. (2008). Hybridities in political media discourse. Politics and Culture, 4. Retrieved 15 February 2010 from http://aspen.conncoll.edu/politicsandculture/ adpage.html
Greer, C. (2007). News media, victims and crime. In P. Davies, P. Francis, & C. Greer (Eds.), Victims, crime and society (pp. 20–49). London: Sage.
Johansson, M. (2014). Reading digital news: Participation roles, activities, and positionings. Journal of Pragmatics, 72(October), 31–45.
Kilgarriff, A., Baisa, V., Bušta, J., Jakubíček, M., Kovář, V., Michelfeit, J., et al. (2014). The Sketch engine: Ten years on. Lexicography, 1(1), 7–36.
Koller, V. (2008). Identity, image, impression: Corporate self-promotion and public reactions. In R. Wodak & V. Koller (Eds.), Handbook of communication in the public sphere (pp. 155–180). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Landert, D., & Jucker, A. H. (2011). Private and public in mass media communication: From letters to the editor to online commentaries. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(5), 1422–1434.
Lange, P. (2007). Searching for the “You” in “YouTube”: An analysis of online response ability. In Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings, pp. 36–50. Retrieved 11 June 2011 from http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-8918.2007.tb00061.x
Lister, M., Dovey, J., Giddings, S., Grant, I., & Kieran, K. (2009). New media: A critical introduction (2nd ed.). Abingdon: Routledge.
Loke, J. (2013). Readers’ debate a local murder trial: ‘Race’ in the online public sphere. Communication, Culture & Critique, 6(1), 179–200.
McKay, S. (2006). Media and language: Overview. In K. Brown (Ed.), Encyclopedia of language and linguistics (Vol. 7, pp. 597–602). Oxford: Elsevier.
Mirabella, J. G. (2012). Scales of justice: Assessing Italian criminal procedure through the Amanda Knox trial. Boston University International Law Journal, 30, 229–260.
Povoledo, E. (2015). Amanda Knox acquitted of 2007 murder by Italy’s highest court. The New York Times, 27 March. Retrieved 27 September 2015 from http://www.nytimes.com/ 2015/03/28/world/europe/amanda-knox-trial.html?_r=0
Richardson, J. (2007). Analysing newspapers: An approach from Critical Discourse Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Richardson, J., & Stanyer, J. (2011). Reader opinion in the digital age: Tabloid and broadsheet newspaper websites and the exercise of political voice. Journalism, 12(8), 1-21.
Sarcevic, S. (1997). New approach to legal translation. The Hague: Kluwer Law International.
Savoie, H. (2009). John McCain get barackroll’d: Authorship, culture and community on YouTube. YouTube and the 2008 Election Cycle in the United States. University of Massachusetts Amherst: ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst, pp. 177–188. Retrieved 15 November 2012 from http://scholarworks.umass.edu/jitpc2009/1
Scott, M. (2008). Oxford Wordsmith Tools Version 5. Liverpool: Lexical Analysis Software.
Stubbs, M. (1996). Text and Corpus Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell.
Stubbs, M. (2001). Words and phrases: Corpus studies of lexical semantics. London: Blackwell.
Sullivan, M. (2012). Questions and answers on how The Times handles online comments from readers. The New York Times, 15 October. Retrieved 1 September 2015 from http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/questions-and-answers-on-how-the-times-handles-online-comments-from-readers/?_r=0
Tannen, D., & Wallat, C. (1999). Interactive frames and knowledge schemas in interaction: Examples from a medical examination/interview. In A. Jaworski & N. Coupland (Eds.), The discourse reader (pp. 346–366). London: Routledge.
The Guardian (2008). Comment is free: About us. The Guardian, 3 June. Retrieved 10 October 2015 from http://www.theguardian.com/help/2008/jun/03/1
The Guardian (2009). Community standards and participation guidelines. The Guardian, 7 May. Retrieved 27 September 2015 from http://www.theguardian.com/community-standards
The New York Times (2015). What kind of comments are you looking for. The New York Times, no date. Retrieved 27 September 2015 from http://www.nytimes.com/content/help/site/ usercontent/ usercontent.html
Van Dijk, T. A. (1998). News as discourse. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Weber, P. (2014). Discussions in the comments section: Factors influencing participation and interactivity in online newspapers’ reader comments. New Media & Society, 16(6), 941–947.
Wodak, R., & Chilton, P. A. (2007). A new agenda in (Critical) Discourse Analysis: Theory, methodology, and interdisciplinarity. Philadelphia/Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Ziegele, M., Breiner, T., & Quiring, O. (2014). What creates interactivity in online news discussions? An exploratory analysis of discussion factors in user comments on news items. Journal of Communication, 64, 1111–1138.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Boyd, M.S. (2016). From News to Comment: Tracing Text Trajectories in News Reporting about the Amanda Knox Trial. In: Gies, L., Bortoluzzi, M. (eds) Transmedia Crime Stories. Palgrave Studies in Crime, Media and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59004-6_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59004-6_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-59003-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-59004-6
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)