“Shy” and “Beautiful Boy” Versus “Strapping 6ft 2in Teenager”: A Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis of Public Discourse About Children as Victims and Perpetrators of Violent Crime

This exploratory study uses corpus-assisted discourse analysis to compare public discourses about two homicide cases, one involving a child perpetrator and one a child victim. We investigate (1) how UK newspapers portray the two juveniles, and (2) how Twitter/X users express their attitudes towards them and their crimes. We constructed two corpora (one per media type), each divided into two subcorpora containing data on the perpetrator and the victim, respectively. We applied corpus linguistic tools, including collocation and keyword analyses, and conducted qualitative discourse analyses on concordance lines. Results suggest that newspapers use nomination strategies to create different levels of formalisation and familiarity between the reader and the subjects. Physical and psychological descriptions emphasise the strength and dominance of the perpetrator and the fragility and powerlessness of the victim. Twitter/X users express their hostility towards the child perpetrator and towards the adult perpetrators in the case with the child victim by using negative appraisal terms, informal language, and profanity. We consider the findings in light of how public discourse can reinforce distinct ideologies of children involved in violent crime, which in turn may influence public opinion and debates about policy and practice in the (youth) criminal legal system.