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1 Alyssa Vergara Nov.

6, 2013 ENGL 106 Halliday Cover Memo I chose to do an article about forensic psychology because that is the field that I hope to enter as a career. That is the field Im currently studying in, because this particular field is something that interests me very much. Specifically, I chose this article about speech patterns of people with Antisocial Personality Disorder for a couple reasons. The article was in my chosen field, the article was very recent, and the essay had groundbreaking information in terms of identifying people that have a strong possibility of being a danger to others. The author is very well known as well. Gawda has been published several times; she has published both a book and several other articles into academic journals.

2 Analyzing Discourse in my Discipline Gawdas article included background information, her hypothesis, her procedures for conducting her research, and her findings. The previous research about the emotional lexis of people with Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) was unclear and conflicting. The research was conducted under the hypothesis that individuals with ASPD have defects in emotional language. They studied groups of prison inmates previously diagnosed with ASPD, inmates not diagnosed with ASPD, and a group of normal males as a control group. The participants described stories from photographs they were shown, and their lexis was examined. The narratives of those with ASPD contained more words describing emotions, the strength of the words was unfitting. This study showed that individuals with ASPD do use a different emotional lexis then people without the disorder; they dont feel emotion therefore dont understand how to use the correct intensity of emotional vocabulary. This information is valuable because it presents an easier and reliable way to detect people with ASPD. This could provide a valuable way to determine the course of action or psychological treatment of an inmate or offender. Swales had a detailed model for how he thought that introductions to academic works should be formatted. The introduction to Gawdas article follows many of the steps laid out by Swales CARS model. According to Swales first step, the author should set a context for his or her research. The author does this in a variety of ways. It can be inferred that this research is of great importance to criminal psychologists. This research would make it considerably easier to recognize and diagnose people with ASPD. Gawda explains that they are exploring the emotional lexis of people with ASPD because previous research had been

3 inconclusive and somewhat contradictory. For example, Gawda states the data concerning lack of anxiety among psychopaths is inconsistent, and the most resent findings indicated that these individuals do not exhibit a lack of anxiety (Gawda). This produces considerable interest in finding the correct information about the emotional lexis of people with ASPD. Gawda reviews previous research findings by explaining that previous research findings were contradictory. Some research found that emotional lexis of people with ASPD was expressive; other research shows their vocabulary to be bare. Gawda also includes key characteristics of the second move of the CARS model. To establish a niche, Gawda makes a counter-claim. Research by Eichler (1965) stated that the emotional narratives by people with ASPD were less cohesive. However, it has been proven that the emotional content of psychopaths text are only less cohesive if they have high anxiety levels. Even move three of Swales CARS model is used in the introduction of Gawdas article. Gawda occupies her niche by stating that the purpose of this research is to investigate the emotional lexis of people diagnosed with ASPD to explore and understand their problems with affect (Gawda). To make and back up important facts in the article, Gawda uses a plethora of references. Most of the references are to past research findings from important past experiments about the language deficiencies of psychopaths (people with ASPD). The author uses non-integral citations throughout the article. Because this was an academic article, the tone is serious, earnest, and pensive. It is formally written, giving the article a serious tone. However, the article goes into a lot of detail and has a surplus of citations of past and current work, making the tone earnest and pensive as well. The author uses a basic essay-style format, with an abstract,

4 introduction, method, results, and discussion. This shows that the discourse values of the author are to provide information to the rest of the discourse community in a clear-cut and uniform way. The article was published in an academic journal, which are used to provide people within a certain field with the most recent and up-to-date research and information within the field, putting Gawdas article in an academic discourse. More specifically, within the forensic psychology academic discourse community. However, because of the nature of the article, this could also fall into other discourses. For example, because the article is about individuals with ASPD, it could potentially be helpful to law enforcement agencies. If they know what to look for in psychopathic speech, they can easily recognize and weed out those individuals. Overall, Gawda broke into a whole new lexis, the emotional lexis of psychopaths. She found this by doing research and experiments with individuals with ASPD. Because these specific individuals cannot feel emotion, when they try to describe it, they over exaggerate and use both more adjectives and adverbs that are stronger than the average person would use. This is important because there is now a reliable way to test individuals for Antisocial Personality Disorder. The jargon used in the article, however, is typical of academic articles with the exception of a few words that are commonly used in psychology. For example, the author uses the word schemata which is a psychological script our brains use to know how to go about different situations. Gawdas article gives groundbreaking and pertinent information about the speech patterns of people with ASPD. Her information will help people in the psychological field, as well as people in other connecting fields such as law enforcement.

5 Bibliography

Gawda, Barbara. "The Emotional Lexicon of Individuals Diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder." Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 42.6 (2013): 57180.Springer Link. Web. 7 Nov. 2013. Information regarding the linguistic abnormalities of individuals with Antisocial Personality Disorder. Article describes that previous research was unsuccessful and confusing as the reasoning behind conducting the research. Article describes the procedure for conducting the experiments and explains the results. Individuals with ASPD use more emotional vocabulary then people without the disorder.

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