Users in uses of language: embodied identity in youth justice conferencing.

Source: (2013) Text & Talk. 33(4-5):467–496.

This paper offers a multimodal perspective on how identities are performed
and negotiated in discourse, concentrating on the interaction of language
and body language within a particular genre, Youth Justice Conferencing. These
conferences operate as a diversionary form of sentencing in the juvenile justice
system of New South Wales, Australia. Typically, they involve a young person
who has committed an offense coming face to face with the victim of their crime,
in the presence of family members, community workers, police, and a conference
“convenor.” We conduct close, multimodal discourse analysis of the interactions
that occur during the Rejoinder step in a particular conference, and investigate an
“angry boy” identity enacted by two young persons at this point in the proceedings.
This persona is very different to the forthcoming and remorseful persona
idealized by conference designers. The role of body language in intermodally proposing
and negotiating bonds within the conference is explored. (authors’ abstract)