Forensic Stylistics in Suicide Notes and its Implication towards Genuineness

I Wayan Pastika, Putu Wahyu Widiatmika, I Gusti Ayu Agung Mas Triadnyani

Abstract


There is unresolved debate regarding the relevance and validity of stylistic features in genuine and fabricated suicide notes shown by past studies. However, past studies also used the same corpus analyzed by previous research. Therefore, an urgency to clarify the debate is required; hence, this study investigates forensic stylistics in cross-nation suicide notes and their implications for determining genuineness. Drawing on Olsson’s linguistic feature theory, this research analyzed ten genuine and five fabricated suicide notes from real cases across eight countries. The data, sourced from verified news reports by local authorities, were examined using both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The findings reveal that while there are notable stylistic overlaps between genuine and fabricated suicide notes, certain distinctive features are more consistently found in genuine notes and are difficult to convincingly replicate. These key features include suicidal propositions, the expression of suicide as the only option, references to death, and emotional ambivalence. This study contributes to ongoing debates on the reliability of linguistic analysis in determining the authenticity of suicide notes and underscores the importance of specific stylistic markers in distinguishing genuine from fabricated notes. This study also strengthens the relevance of suicide note stylistic features by connecting psychological reasonings represented by linguistic expressions. 


Keywords


Cross-nation; Forensic Linguistics; Genuineness; Stylistics; Suicide Note

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.17509/ijal.v15i1.75562

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