Verifying the authenticity of suicide notes from the perspective of legal linguistics; Introducing Brown and Clark's theme analysis method (A case study of ten examples of suicide notes in Mashhad)

Subject Areas :

omid Darbar ¹ , hamidreza Mirzajani ² , Abbas Sheikholeslami ³ , azam estaji ⁴

1 - student of PHD,Department of law,Islamic Azad University,Mashhad,Iran
2 - penal and criminology, islamic Azad university of Mashhad
3 - عضو هیات علمی گروه حقوق دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی واحد مشهد
4 - PhD in linguistics public, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran.

Received: 2023-11-21 Accepted : 2024-07-10 Published : 2024-09-20

Keywords: suicide note, theme analysis, Brown and Clark, health and safety, legal linguistics,

Abstract :

Today, content analysis is widely used in various social sciences including nursing, medicine, religious studies, and fields involving qualitative and text-based research. The process of content analysis is a technique of qualitative data analysis where patterns of meaning in the data are identified. This technique may be used for the in-depth analysis of suicide notes since it could be a good method to analyze the notes and, by so doing, establish their genuineness and veracity. In this article, the various stages, including the Brown and Clarke content analysis method, are presented. The Brown and Clarke content analysis method is based on these six stages: 1. Familiarize yourself with the data, 2. Coding, 3. Coding analysis, 4. Identify and review themes, 5. Preparing the report, 6. Writing up. In this study, by operationalizing the method of Brown and Clarke content analysis and since this was the first attempt to analyze suicide notes in Persian, to be familiar with the method, we analyzed the content of 10 suicide cases from Mashhad city, so that in the analysis we found out that the dominant theme in the first to fourth suicide notes is ‘romantic expressions and using loving phrases’ and in suicide notes five to ten the main theme and subthemes of the dominant theme ‘guidance for the survivors’ including financial, emotional and prescriptive directives are observed. Therefore, in the context of this study we can conclude that when suicide note lives are at the core of analyzing content, versus the traumatic events or other social issues such as drinking, financial problems, marital problems, or determination, the content analysis method proves to be successful in bringing out the themes in it, while on the other hand by expanding the research and conducting statistical tests the accuracy and reliability of suicide notes can be confirmed.

 

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ـ رتبه ‌بندی سلامت ایالات متحده (15 سپتامبر 2020):
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