| This paper employs linguistic and historical methodologies to examine local newspaper coverage of executions in Huntsville, Texas. This paper focuses on three distinct time periods: the 1930's (often seen as the peak era in favor of the death penalty), the 1960's (the preFurman era when the public opinion started to turn against the death penalty), and the era since 1976 (the post-Furman era characterized by increased public support for the death penalty). Representative samples of newspaper articles in the local Huntsville newspaper from these three time periods are chosen and noun phrases referring to the person executed (e.g. convicted murderer, killer, the leader of the gang responsible for the execution-style shooting death of a Rice University student I I eleven years ago, etc.) are examined in order to see to what extent and how the local media portrayal of the executed person has changed over the three periods under investigation. We argue that the referential expressions used for the person executed reflect some changes. in the attitudes towards the death penalty and we discuss the historical significance of these linguistically verifiable changes. We also argue that, despite the oftentimes overtly neutral expressions, a close analysis reveals a subtle pro-death penalty bias at all three time periods. |
Updated 05/20/2006