Ellen Seppälä Good Cop, Bad Cop? An Analysis of the Evaluative Language used by the Hosts of the True Crime Podcast Crime Junkie when Discussing Law Enforcement Ellen Seppälä, 37943 Pro gradu-avhandling i engelska språket och litteraturen Handledare: Brita Wårvik Fakulteten för humaniora, psykologi och teologi Åbo Akademi 2020 i Ellen Seppälä Abo Akademi University – The Faculty of Arts, Psychology and Theology Master’s thesis abstract Subject: English Language and Literature Author: Ellen Seppälä Title: Good Cop, Bad Cop? – An Analysis of the Evaluative Language used by the Hosts of the True Crime Podcast Crime Junkie when Discussing Law Enforcement Supervisor: Brita Wårvik During the twentieth century, podcasting was introduced as a new medium for keeping people informed as it was less restricted by time and place than e.g. radio. From the beginning, true crime, already a popular topic in other media, has been covered in podcasts. Podcast hosts can be seen to influence their audience in much the same manner as other media hosts do. As linguists Martin and White present, the way speakers evaluate behavior may lead their listeners to evaluate in a similar manner. The aim of this thesis is to study the way podcast hosts evaluate the behavior of law enforcement, i.e. either positively or negatively. Two analyses were conducted on seven transcribed episodes of the American true crime podcast Crime Junkie. Corpus linguistics was used to find frequencies of lexical items for law enforcement used by the podcast hosts. The corpus analysis was used as the starting point for the analysis of evaluative language, which was conducted using appraisal theory with a focus on the subcomponent judgement, exploring how law enforcement’s behavior was judged by the podcast hosts in relation to polarity, keywords and prosodic features. The most frequently used terms for law enforcement include police and sheriff, which suggests that there is a difference of terms chosen by the hosts depending on the branch of law enforcement that was discussed in the podcast episode. The hypothesis that the podcast hosts would evaluate American law enforcement in a more negative than positive manner proved accurate. Mainly, law enforcement was described as unreliable, dishonest and unjust, although, interestingly, they were still seen as competent in some respects. The podcast hosts seem to show distrust in law enforcement. Media coverage on crime has been shown to influence public perception and opinion on crime and law enforcement, and this can be the case for podcasts as well. The language and vocabulary used by podcast hosts can be studied from various perspectives. In linguistics and media research, more studies need to be conducted on evaluative language by podcast hosts to determine whether they influence their audience like other media hosts tend to do, and whether or not this influence might affect how their listeners perceive, in this case, law enforcement. The abundance of ‘fake news’ around the globe signifies a clear need to be able to distinguish between reality and fiction and being aware of the media’s influence. Keywords: appraisal theory, podcast, true crime, American law enforcement, corpus linguistics, Crime Junkie Date: 22.4.2020 Number of pages: 122 i Ellen Seppälä Table of Contents Abstract ....................................................................................................................................... i Table of Contents ...................................................................................................................... ii List of Tables and Figures......................................................................................................... iv 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 1.1. True crime ....................................................................................................................................2 1.2. The podcast...................................................................................................................................3 1.3. True crime podcasts......................................................................................................................5 2. Background ............................................................................................................................ 8 2.1. Law Enforcement in the United States .........................................................................................8 2.1.1. Different branches of law enforcement ...........................................................................................8 2.1.2. Trust and confidence in American law enforcement .....................................................................11 2.2. The Influence of Media ..............................................................................................................15 2.2.1. Media’s influence on public perception of crime in the US ..........................................................15 2.2.2. Media’s influence on public perception of law enforcement ........................................................18 2.2.3. True crime podcasts’ influence on their audience .........................................................................20 3. Theoretical Framework ........................................................................................................ 23 3.1. Corpus Linguistics ......................................................................................................................23 3.2. Appraisal Model .........................................................................................................................24 3.2.1. Attitude ..........................................................................................................................................26 3.2.2. Engagement and Graduation..........................................................................................................28 4. Materials & Methods ........................................................................................................... 30 4.1. Material: The Podcast .................................................................................................................30 4.2. Methods: Analyzing the podcast episodes .................................................................................33 4.2.1. Transcription of episodes ...............................................................................................................33 4.2.2. A note on analyzing audio recordings ...........................................................................................34 4.3. Wordsmith analysis ....................................................................................................................36 4.4. Appraisal analysis.......................................................................................................................40 4.4.1. Judgement ......................................................................................................................................41 4.4.2. Analyzing judgement .....................................................................................................................42 5. Results .................................................................................................................................. 46 5.1. Wordsmith analysis ....................................................................................................................46 5.2. Appraisal analysis.......................................................................................................................48 6. Discussion ............................................................................................................................ 57 6.1. Law enforcement vocabulary .....................................................................................................57 6.2. Judgement of law enforcement...................................................................................................59 ii Ellen Seppälä 6.3. Podcast hosts’ influence on its audience ....................................................................................63 6.4. Limitations and future research ..................................................................................................65 7. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 67 Swedish Summary ................................................................................................................... 70 References ................................................................................................................................ 78 Appendices ............................................................................................................................... 87 iii Ellen Seppälä List of Tables and Figures Tables: Table 1: Information about episodes chosen for analysis ........................................................ 33 Table 2: Lexical items search in Wordsmith ........................................................................... 39 Table 3: Illustrative realizations for social esteem .................................................................. 43 Table 4: Illustrative realizations for social sanction ...............................................................