Citation

Hurt M, Grant T. Discourse Soc. 2019; 30(2): 154-171.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0957926518816195

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Intent is a psychological quality that threat assessors view as a required step on a threatener's pathway to action. Recognizing the presence of intent in threatening language is therefore crucial to determining whether a threat is credible. Nevertheless, a 'lack of empirical guidance' (p. 326) is available concerning how violent intent is expressed linguistically. Using the subsystem of judgment in Appraisal analysis, this study compares realized with non-realized 'pledges to harm', revealing occasionally counterintuitive patterns of stancetaking by both author types - for example, that the non-realized texts are both prosodically more violent and more threatening, while the realized pledges are more ethically nuanced - which may begin to shed light on which attitudinal markers reliably correlate with an author's intention to do future harm.

Language: en