Linguistic analysis of suicide notes, two case studies

Document Type : Original Article

Author

• azam estaji

https://doi.org/10.22067/jlkd.2021.48685.0

Abstract

A suicide note is any kind of text that is left behind before a person commits suicide or intends to commit suicide. These texts have been analyzed by linguists and psychologists among others to get a better understanding of the suicide act. The present paper first reviews how these notes have been analyzed .
In the second part of the paper, four Farsi suicide notes are presented and based on Prokofyeva (2013) are analyzed. According to her, a clear statement of reasoning should be present in genuine suicide notes either with a direct statement or an implied one. The ‘clear statement’ of why the suicide takes place is an integral part of almost every genuine suicide note Prokofyeva (2013) examined, as it is an aim of its author to explain why such a decision has been made. As for the structure of suicide notes, each note consists of the following components: a- Form of address (more often someone specific) b - Introduction) c- Culmination/body ( d - Conclusion/closing words (farewell; signature; post-scriptum; ). The analysis of Farsi notes which vary between 5 to18 words, shows that all of them state clearly the reason for committing suicide and express their last feelings (the first note expresses anger and puts the blame on someone, the second note expresses relief and forgiveness while the last one expresses hatred.) Considering the four components of a note, the first note which is very short, only has the introduction component. Other notes which are longer, have three components: introduction, body, conclusion or form of address. The ‘clear statement’ of why the suicide takes place is common to all the short notes analyzed. This paper emphasizes on the need to build a corpus of Farsi suicide notes for future studies in this interdisciplinary area.

Keywords

• suicide notes
• linguistic content
• qualitative analysis
• clear reasoning

20.1001.1.20087233.1399.12.2.7.1

Main Subjects

• Discourse analysis

References

• مرادی سعداله و خادمی علی. 1381"بررسی وضعیت خودکشی های منجر به مرگ در ایران و مقایسه آن با نرخهای جهانی". مجله علمی پزشکی قانونی 1; 8(27):16-21.
• Chaski, C.E. & Huddle, D. 2012: "Is This a Real Suicide Note? Authentication Using Statistical Classifiers and Computational Linguistics." Proceedings of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.Volume XVII: 439.
• Fernández-Cabana^, ; Julio Jiménez-Féliz; María Teresa Alves-Pérez; RaimundoMateos; Ignacio Gómez-ReinoRodríguezand Alejandro García-Caballero (2015) Linguistic analysis of suicide notes in Spain. Europian Journal  of Psychiatry. vol.29 no.2 
• Hendelman L. D , D. Lester. 2007. "The content of suicide notes from attempters and completers".Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention, Vol 28(2), 2007, 102-104.
• Joiner, T. E., et al. 2002: Perceived burdensomeness and suicidality: Two studies on the suicide notes of those attempting and those completing suicide. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 21: 531-545.
• Joiner, T. (2005). Why people die by suicide. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Lester, D. (2008) COMPUTER ANALYSIS OF THE CONTENT OF SUICIDE NOTES FROM MEN AND WOMEN. Psychological Reports: Volume 102pp. 575-576
• Menninger KA. Man Against Himself. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company; 1938. [Google Scholar]
• Olsson, John (2004) Forensic linguistics, an introduction to language, crime and law .London, New York: Continuum.
• Osgood, C. E., & Walker, E. G. (1959). Motivation and language behavior: A content analysis of suicide notes. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59, 58-67.
• Pestian, J., P, Matykiewicz P., Grupp-Phelan, J. 2008: Using natural language pro- cessing to classify suicide notes. Proceedings of the Workshop on Cur- rent Trends in Biomedical Natural Language Processing. BioNLP: 08:96–97,
• Pestian,P.Pawel Matykiewicz, Michelle Linn-Gust, Brett South, OzlemUzuner, Jan Wiebe, BretonnelCohen,John Hurdle, and Christopher Brew^{. (} 2012). Sentiment Analysis of Suicide Notes: A Shared Task. Biomed Inform Insights. 2012; 5(Suppl 1): 3–16.
• Prokofyeva, T. 2013. Language Use in Two Types of Suicide Texts. Linköping University.
• URL http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-102099
• Shapero, J. The language of Suicide notes. (2011). University of Birmingham. Web address: http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/1525/1/Shapero11PhD.pdf
• Shneidman, E. S., & Farberow, L. (1957). Clues to suicide. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Willimas, S. (2006). New Approaches to Preventing Suicide: A Manual for Practitioners. Journal of psychiatric and mental health nursing. Vol 13, issue 6.