Postmodern Criminology: the Violence of the Language

Starting from the 1990s, postmodern criminology has been gaining substantial importance. This discipline lays particular emphasis on such aspects as gender, class, and race in its theories of the origins of crime. According to Arrigo (2019), postmodern criminology recognizes the specific value of language as a non-neutral, politically charged instrument of communication. Linguistic elements serve to represent the views and the values of a particular social group.

Such a notion as the violence of language suggests that words may carry damaging meaning, being an oppression tool in the modern environment. Arrigo (2019) states that the courtroom discourse is often offensive to some participants of the process, representing the phenomenon of linguistic oppression, referring to the Los Angeles riots resulting from such a situation. Postmodern criminology aims at investigating such negative tendencies and providing potential solutions. Women appear to be one of the groups, which have been experiencing the system’s oppression in current settings. Arrigo (2019) writes that most criminology education activities are conducted by white males representing the middle class. Accordingly, women who pursue criminology have their professors’ and supervisors’ views imposed on them. This hegemony is expressed through particular linguistic patterns, which reveal their discriminatory nature after thorough analysis.

References

Arrigo, B. A. (2019). Postmodern criminology on race, class, and gender. In M. D. Schwartz & D. Milovanovic (Eds.). Race, gender, and class in criminology: The intersections (pp. 73-88). Routledge.