The representation of “b” in the true crime documentary “abducted in plain sight” The representation of “b” in the true crime documentary “abducted in plain sight”
Rationale of the study
True crime can be considered an emerging entertainment subgenre in the current scene of pop culture True crime comes in various forms - literary works (books, magazines), audio content (radio shows, podcasts) and audio-visuals (television shows, YouTube videos, films) Although non-fiction crime literary works have a long history, dating back to the 16th century in the UK in the form of pamphlets (Burger, 2016), according to Murley (2008), modern true crime seems to have emerged from the 1950s thanks to the True Detective Magazine (an American true crime magazine) This emergence of modern true crime also marked the shift in how a crime is narrated and understood in crime writing Instead of the sensationalist narrative which usually includes unsavory illustration of criminal acts, modern true crime offers a narrative that is “more sensitive to context, more psychologically sophisticated, more willing to make conjectures about the unknown thoughts and motivations of killers” (Murley, 2008) Thanks to that shift, despite still being criticized and considered a part of “trash culture” by some, true crime, especially true crime documentary films, has become increasingly popular as it does not merely report the crime but also provides a somewhat deeper analysis of the perpetrators‟ background as well as a sympathetic exploration of the victims‟ lives According to statistics provided by Parrot Analytics (a company specialized in measuring and predicting audience demand for media content in all platforms around the world), true crime is the biggest and the second fastest-growing documentary subgenre as of May 2021 (Sayles, 2021)
Having been fascinated by and shamelessly enjoying this subgenre of entertainment for years, the researcher noticed that most true crime documentary films on streaming platforms report murders and sex-related crimes where victims are deceased Therefore, these documentary films seem to recount the criminal acts and the perpetrators through the movie makers‟ narration and interviews of the victims‟ families as well as law enforcement Different from those, Abducted in Plain Sight (2017) covers the kidnapping of Jan Broberg through a series of interviews of not only the victim‟s family and law enforcement officer (an FBI agent) but also Jan – the victim herself Intrigued by the possible difference in how a criminal is represented through the victim‟s narration, the researcher attempts to use the Systemic Functional Linguistics theories (hereinafter SFL) to study how the perpetrator - Robert Berchtold (also known as B) - is represented in the documentary by analyzing the transitivity system in the account of the victim herself and that of the FBI agent It should be noted that the system of transitivity realizes ideational meaning, which construes the speaker‟s experience In other words, investigating the transitivity system in the utterances of victims as well as the FBI agent can reveal the ideas and/or experiences concerning the perpetrator that they have and wish to convey in the 91-minute documentary film
Additionally, since the researcher has had experiences working as a subtitle translator for video content similar to this true crime documentary, the researcher is interested in exploring how the experiences are portrayed through the transitivity system and how it may affect the representation of the characters During the translation process, a translator may change the grammatical structure of the source language text, which may in turn change the processes in the transitivity system Therefore, attaining the knowledge of how the change of processes may affect the experiential meaning, the researcher can become more mindful of the grammatical shift and improve her future translation assignments
In brief, the above-mentioned reasons inspired the researcher to carry out a study entitled: The representation of "B" in the true crime documentary “Abducted in Plain Sight".
Aim of the study and research questions
The study aims at exploring how the kidnapper B is represented in the 91-minute case Additionally, it investigates to see if the representation of B through the victim‟s account differs from that of the FBI agent
To achieve the aforementioned aims, the study seeks answers to the two following questions:
1 How is B represented by the accounts of the victim and the FBI agent?
2 What are the differences and similarities in the way B is represented by the victim’s description and that of the FBI agent?
Significance of the study
With the above-mentioned aims, the outcomes of this research are expected to contribute to the body of knowledge related to SFL research, particularly the pool of research on experiential meaning of spoken text Linguists and researchers can utilize such results as reference for future studies
In addition, the study hopes to provide an insight on the language used by victims to recount incidents concerning the perpetrator Such insight may assist law enforcement officers as well as forensic linguists when dealing with a victim‟s testimony The expected findings about the language used by the FBI agent are also hoped to provide a reflection for law enforcement officers to maybe adjust their spoken language when reporting a criminal case to the mass audience.
Scope of the study
The target data of this study is the true crime documentary title “Abducted in Plain Sight” released by Netflix However, as the footage concerning B is the reenactment of actors, which may be influenced by the director of the film, the linguistic representation of B is the sole subject of analysis The study does not attempt to cover the entire set of spoken texts in the 91-minute documentary but limits itself to only the utterances of the victim and the FBI agent concerning the perpetrator B
Furthermore, the researcher only focuses on the experiential meaning of the utterances In other words, the researcher only utilizes the transitivity system to analyze the experiential meanings, the other aspect of the ideational metafunction (i.e logical meaning) as well as other metafunctions are not discussed.
Methods of the study
This study is a discourse analysis in SFL approach, which employs both the qualitative and quantitative approaches with the former being the primary research method The qualitative approach is adopted to identify, describe and analyze the representational meaning in the collected data Quantitative approach is chosen to measure the percentage of elements of the transitivity system used by the two research subjects.
Organization of the study
The study consists of three chapters, an Introduction and a Conclusion To be specific:
Introduction presents the rationale as well as the research questions, aims, significance and scope of the study
Chapter 1: Literature review provides the theoretical background and review of previous studies in the field
Chapter 2: Methodology specifies the research design, analytical framework, data collection and analysis procedure
Chapter 3: Findings and Discussion reports and discusses the results of the analysis to answer the research questions
Conclusion summarizes the major findings and points out the implications as well as the limitations of the study.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL)
Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is one of many functional approaches to linguistics It was developed by Michael Halliday in the mid-nineteenth century and introduced in his article titled “Categories of the theory of grammar” published in WORD (Martin, 2016) Contrary to the formal approach to linguistics, which typically starts with the study of form before exploring the meaning attached to it, SFL explores language “as a system of meanings, accompanied by forms through which the meanings can be realized” (Halliday, 1994) SFL is also known for its notion of viewing language as “a social semiotic system” meaning language is shaped by the user‟s choices and by the socio-cultural context in which it is realized In that sense, SFL is systemic as it deems language as a set of “interlocking options” for meaning-making and functional as it deals with what and how meanings are expressed by language to achieve certain functions.
Metafunctions
Under the SFL approach to linguistics, there are three strands of meaning, or three metafunctions, in a clause The summarized description of each metafunction presented by Halliday & Matthiessen (2014) is as follows
Ideational metafunction refers to “clause as a representation” It is concerned with construing the speaker's ideas as well as the experience of the world around him and that of his own inner world Ideational metafunction is generally classified into experiential meaning (or representational meaning) and logical meaning; the former deals with the content of clauses while the latter relates to the connection between clauses
Interpersonal metafunction is to do with establishing and maintaining social relationships with listeners or readers, viewing “clause as an exchange” The construal of this meaning is through the system of MOOD and modality
Textual metafunction , deeming “clause as a message”, relates to how language is linked to itself as well as its surrounding text and context The construal of this meaning is through theme and rheme, as well as the system of cohesion (cohesive devices)
With regards to the scope and aims of this study, experiential meaning is selected as the primary focus and will be discussed in detail.
Experiential meaning
As discussed above, among the two functions of ideational metafunction, experiential meaning primarily concerns the content of the text and how it represents the speaker's experience of the external (physical) world and the internal world of their consciousness
Experiential meaning is realized through the transitivity system which is constituted by processes (what is done), participants (who are involved), and circumstances (where the processes occur)
Process is the core of the experience as it carries the main content of the experience: the state, action or event (Thompson, 2014) In English, there are six process types namely material process, mental process, relational process, behavioral process, existential process and verbal process (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014)
Note Reprinted from Halliday‟s Introduction to Functional Grammar (4th ed., p.216), by M A K
Halliday and M I M Matthiessen, 2014 London: Edward Arnold Copyright 2014 by M.A.K Halliday and M.I.M Matthiessen
As seen in Figure 1, material, mental and relational are three major processes of doing, sensing, and being, which could be further divided into the sub-categories Additionally, placed at the boundaries of these principal process types are the three subsidiary ones
As defined in Introduction to Functional Grammar (Halliday & Matthiessen,
2014), “„material‟ clauses are clauses of doing-&-happening: a „material‟ clause construes a quantum of change in the flow of events as taking place through some input of energy.” In other words, the material process deals with the process of expressing experience and construing changes in the physical world The Actor (the “doer”) is an obligatory participant in this process, though it can be hidden from the clause Another participant involved in this process is the Goal - the one at whom the changes are directed Asides from Actor and Goal, other optional participants related to this process are Medium, Factive, Range and Beneficiary Material clauses can be further divided into intransitive and transitive clauses based on the impact of the process outcome The outcome of an intranstive clause is typically confined to only the Actor while that of a transitive clause affects the Goal Moreover, the nature of the outcome acts as the criterion to divide material clauses into creative and transformative clauses The former refers to clauses where the participant is construed as coming into existence, whereas the latter are clauses in which an already existing participant is construed as being changed or transformed
Example: I knitted this dress yesterday
Actor Material (creative) Goal Location (Temporal)
Mental process construes the process of sensing, thinking and feeling emotions In that sense, mental clauses express our inner world There are typically two participants involved in the mental process: the Senser and the Phenomenon The former is the conscious being who engages in the mental process by sensing, thinking and feeling; the latter is that which is felt, thought and sensed It is noted that mental processes can be divided into four subtypes: perceptive, cognitive, desiderative and emotive (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014)
Relational process is the process of being and having which “serves to characterize and to identify” (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014) and connect our experiences In other words, there are no changes taking place in relational clauses, rather, relational clauses deal with how attributes mentioned are connected Relational process is divided into two modes which are attributive and identifying
In an attributive relational clause, there are two participants: the Carrier (the entity that “carries” the attributes) and the Attribute
Example: She is a licensed therapist
In an identifying relational clause, the two participants involved are Value (the general category) and Token (the specific embodiment)
Example: Russia is the largest country in the world
Russia is the largest country in the world
Behavioral process lies between material process and mental process in the sense that it is the process of “physiological and psychological behaviour, like breathing, coughing, smiling, dreaming and staring” (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014) It can also be understood that behavioral processes represent the outer manifestation of our inner thoughts The sole participant in this process is the Behaver
Between material process and relational process is the existential process, which deals with existence, the state of existing The sole participant of this process is the
Existent, the entity that is experiencing the state of existing This process is also characterized by the subject “there”
Example: There are stars in the sky
There are stars in the sky
Verbal process falls between mental and relational processes and it is to do with the act of saying (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014) Verbal clauses represent relations formed in human consciousness and enacted through language The constant participant in any verbal process is the Sayer who produces the Verbiage (the content of the utterance) In some cases, the Receiver who is addressed, and the Target who the saying is directed at, are also present
Example: I explained to her what it meant
I explained to her what it meant
Process types in transitivity system
Participants, directly involved Participants, obliquely involved material: action event
Scope; Initiator; Attribute behavioural „behaving‟ Behaver Behaviour mental: perception cognition desideration emotion
Senser, Phenomenon Inducer verbal „saying‟ Sayer, Target Receiver Verbiage relational: attribution identification
Carrier, Attribute Identified, Identifier, Token, Value
Attributor, Beneficiary Assignor existential „existing‟ Existent
Note Reprinted from Halliday‟s Introduction to Functional Grammar (4th ed., p.311), by M A K
Halliday and M I M Matthiessen, 2014 London: Edward Arnold Copyright 2014 by M.A.K Halliday and M.I.M Matthiessen
Participants are entities - either conscious or nonconscious - that are involved in processes by acting, sensing or being affected As partly demonstrated in the previous part about the process, it is apparent that participants are incorporated into each of the six processes In that sense, the role of participants depends on which processes they belong to (as demonstrated in table 1)
The final element of a transitivity system is circumstances Unlike process and participants, circumstances are frequently opted out Circumstances are actualized by circumstantial adjuncts and essentially present the background in which the processes occur (Thompson, 2014)
The table below illustrates the types of circumstances in the system of transitivity:
Types of circumstances in transitivity system
TYPE Wh- item Examples of realization enhancing 1 Extent distance how far? for; throughout
„measured‟ nominal group duration how long? for; throughout
„measured‟ nominal group frequency how many times?
[there, here] at, in, on, by, near; to, towards, into, onto, (away) from, out of, off; behind, in front of, above, below, under, alongside adverb of place: abroad, overseas, home, upstairs, downstairs, inside, outside; out, up, down, behind; left, right, straight ; there, here time when?
[then, now] at, in, on; to, until, till, towards, into, from, since, during, before, after adverb of time: today, yesterday, tomorrow; now, then
[thus] by, through, with, by means of, out of [+ material], from quality how? in + a + quality (e.g dignified) +
(e.g dignity); according to adverbs in -ly, -wise; fast, well; together, jointly, separately, respectively comparison how? what like? like, unlike; in + the manner of adverbs of comparison differently degree how much? to + a high/low/ degree/extent; adverbs of degree much, greatly, considerably, deeply [often collocationally linked to lexical verb, e.g love + deeply, understand
4 Cause reason why? because of, as a result of, thanks to, due to, for want of, for, of, out of, through purpose why? what for? for, for the purpose of, for the sake of, in the hope of behalf who for? for, for the sake of, in favour of, against [„not in favour of‟], on behalf of
5 Contingency condition why? in case of, in the event of default in default of, in the absence of, short of, without [„if it had not been for‟] concession despite, in spite of extending 6
Accompaniment comitative who/what with? with; without additive and who/what else? as well as, besides; instead of elaborating 7 Role guise what as? as, by way of, in the role/shape/guise/form of product what into? into projection 8 Matter what about? about, concerning, on, of, with reference to, in [„with respect to‟]
9 Angle source according to, in the words of viewpoint to, in the view/opinion of, from the standpoint of
Note Reprinted from Halliday‟s Introduction to Functional Grammar (4th ed., p.313-314), by M A K
Halliday and M I M Matthiessen, 2014 London: Edward Arnold Copyright 2014 by M.A.K Halliday and M.I.M Matthiessen
Documentary films as a genre
The SFL approach to genres defines them as “staged, goal-oriented social processes” (Bawarshi & Reiff, 2010) Martin, Christie, and Rothery (as cited in Bawarshi
& Reiff, 2010) further explained that “social processes” refers to the fact that genres are the results of the interaction between members of a cultural group; “goal-oriented” means that texts of a genre evolve to fulfill the participants‟ purposes and genres are “staged” since it typically takes multiple steps to reach the goal In other words, a group of texts can be considered a genre if those texts all unfold toward a common communicative purpose Therefore, documentary films can be considered a genre if the content they convey strives to perform the same purpose
In her book “Documentary film: A very short introduction” (2007), Patricia Aufderheide states that the first documentary films emerged in the late nineteenth century The contents of these films were very diverse It could be an artful piece of propaganda, or a record of a trip, or a visual poem Perhaps, for this reason, although documentaries back then were considered films that contained “moving pictures of real- life events”, they did not always bear the name “documentary” Rather, these films were also called „„educationals,‟‟ „„actualities,‟‟ and „„interest films‟‟
Aufderheide (2007) also gave a simple answer to the question “What is a documentary?” that it is “a movie about real life” yet it may not be a movie in the sense that Stars War is a movie A documentary film simply is a film telling a story about real- life events and it claims to do so truthfully Therefore, it is true that as viewers, we can expect a documentary to be an objective and truthful representation of an individual‟s real-life experience Yet it should be noted that documentaries are still a part of media, which is used to not only provide us with understanding of the world but also shape and orient our opinions Furthermore, consumer entertainment is a crucial element in the process of film-making as it can decide the budget for these films For these reasons, documentaries are not exempted from the manipulation, especially that of filmmakers Filmmakers may make use of the tools available in terms of “sound (ambient sound, soundtrack music, special sound effects, dialogue, narration); images (material shot on location, historical images captured in photographs, video, or objects); special effects in audio and video, including animation; and pacing (length of scenes, number of cuts, script or storytelling structure)” to present the story in their desired structured and focus (Aufderheide, 2007) Nonetheless, “The genre of documentary always has two crucial elements that are in tension: representation, and reality.” (Aufderheide, 2007)
A couple years later, Bill Nichols published the second edition of his book
“Introduction to Documentary” (2010), whose first chapter touched on John Grierson‟s initial proposed definition of documentary as the “creative treatment of actuality” and attempted to define documentary film Nichols (2010) examined, discussed and modified three commonsense assumptions about documentary to somewhat conceptualize what a documentary is The three commonsense ideas about documentaries discussed were:
“documentaries are about reality; they‟re about something that actually happened”,
“documentaries are about real people” and “documentaries tell stories about what happens in the real world” As Nichols (2010) explained, these three assumptions are true yet they needed some refinements to better convey the definition of documentary films The modification of the aforementioned ideas rendered a somewhat more accurate definition:
Documentary film speaks about situations and events involving real people (social actors) who present themselves to us as themselves in stories that convey a plausible proposal about, or perspective on, the lives, situations, and events portrayed The distinct point of view of the filmmaker shapes this story into a way of seeing the historical world directly rather than into a fictional allegory (Nichols, 2010, p.14)
“Real people” here refers to people who do not “play” or act like actors do, rather, they just appear to represent themselves in the stories Additionally, the extent to which a story is told in a documentary is more a “plausible proposal” or representation of what took place than an interpretation of what incident might have occurred
Similar to Aufderheide (2007) and Nichols (2010), other scholars in the field have also mainly focused on these two elements to differentiate documentaries and fictional films, with significant emphasis on the element of “reality” (Smith & Rock, 2014) Nevertheless, in their journal article, Smith and Rock (2014) argued that these two genres can be more distinctly defined based on the filmmakers' intention rather than the content
To be specific, documentaries are communication products serving as “statements of fact” whereas fictional films primarily concern “the art of storytelling” Hence, Smith and Rock (2014) proposed a different definition of documentary films as follows: “[ ] a documentary may be understood as a series of visually and/or audibly expressed statements connected by narrative, and communicated from the author/authors to the viewer with the intention that it be received as fact.”
All in all, despite different ways of defining documentary films, the consensus is that documentaries serve the purpose of displaying a truthful representation of past and/or present real-life situations and events, adhering to known facts, with the involvement of non-acting people In other words, the general function of documentaries is to inform viewers of real-life events Documentary films, therefore, can indeed be deemed as a genre in accordance with the abovementioned SFL definition of genres To fulfil their function of showing truthful representation of real-life events, documentaries typically contain the appearance and account of real, non-acting individuals who are in some ways involved in the incident(s) in question Additionally, some sorts of evidence will also be data of this study is also a documentary, it will likely perform the same function of talking about real life historical events In doing so, the documentary in question is also expected to contain multiple recounts of real, non-acting people who are involved or related to the incidents.
Related studies
SFL in general and transitivity systems in particular have been the interest of many scholars and have been implemented as the theoretical framework by many Several studies of transitivity systems in movies, specifically animation movies have been conducted In 2016, Nunung Nurhayati investigated the transitivity system in the animation movie Big Hero 6 (Directed by Don Hall and Chris Williams) using Halliday‟s theory of SFL Nurhayati mainly analyzed the spoken text uttered by Hiro - the protagonist of the movie Her study found that out of the 372 clauses that Hiro uttered, the dominating process was material process and the primary participant was actor - typically used by Hiro to refer to Baymax (the sidekick) Such outcomes indicated that the movie mainly covered actions or events and Baymax accompanied Hiro‟s realization of actions As for circumstance, the most prominent one was location Nurhayati concluded that Hiro used action verbs to express his experience Similarly, Akmalia
(2020) carried out research on how the transitivity system was realized in the screenplay
Up written by Pete Docter and Bob Peterson Akmalia concluded that of the 321 clauses of dialogues found, the most prominent process was material process which demonstrated that the two main characters primarily performed real and tangible actions in the physical world through their utterances Additionally, the most used participant and circumstance are actor and circumstance of place respectively Another noteworthy paper on transitivity analysis of animated movies is that of Choudhry and Chaudhary In 2020, Choudhry and Chaudhary published a journal article entitled “Shattering Conventional Gender Roles: Transitivity Analysis of Disney‟s Zootopia” The paper employed Halliday‟s theory of transitivity to explore the transitivity system of the movie Zootopia thereby discovering the nature of Judy Hopps - the protagonist - and how such representation defied conventional gender roles Choudhry and Chaudhary (2020) found that the most prominent process was material which indicated that Judy is primarily seen performing actions throughout her transformation from a small rabbit to a police officer Therefore, it was concluded that Judy in particular and the movie in general possesses the
“active nature”, presenting Judy as a brave and courageous, empowered woman On the other hand, Sihura (2020) utilized the theory proposed by Martin, Matthiessen, and Painter (1997) to explore the transitivity process in the famous animation movie Frozen
Sihura‟s study did not explore additional discourse analysis elements of the transitivity system and only concluded that the dominant process in Frozen was material process, followed by mental, relational, behavioral, verbal and existential processes It is rather apparent that these studies, except for that of Choudhry and Chaudhary, only explored the prominent types of process, participant and circumstance in animated movies, which is rather restricted Furthermore, research of SFL in movies itself remains relatively limited
Scholars also seem to have started to become more interested in true crime documentaries since its recent emergence In 2014, Horeck composed an essay centering the true crime documentary Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (2008) which investigated its affective impact Horeck (2014) explored how this documentary film circulated across multiple different platforms (websites like IMDB.com and Amazon.com) as a cultural object and how its affective impact foregrounded “the new context in which questions about judgement and the law, crime and ethics are being formed” (Horeck, 2014) Similarly, McCabe (2021) put out an article entitled
“Conversations with a killer: the Ted Bundy tapes and affective responses to the true crime documentary” As the title suggests, her article placed the focus on the docu-series
Conversation with a killer: the Ted Bundy tapes (2019) and the affective responses it generated After looking at the reviews online, McCabe suggested that viewers‟ responses differed due to conflicting readings of the docu-series She also proposed that such affective responses revealed how true crime documentaries were capable of producing “necessary emotional responses in order to reframe established narratives” documentaries by exploring the general progression of the events presented as well as the social context surrounding the documentary Recently, Evans (2020) opted for a different approach to true crime documentaries where she investigated how communal and personal traumas were represented in the two documentaries The Keepers (2017) and Casting JonBenet (2017) through analysis of scenes “where the traumatic past is remember, resurfaces or is reconstructed” Evans' (2020) work found that the documentary depicted traumatic past events using “a language of fragmentation, abstraction and appeals to sensation” However, such language had more to do with the visual elements and the structure of the films to create a cinematic representation It is noticeable that the linguistic elements were not investigated thoroughly and linguistically by Horeck (2014), McCabe (2021) and Evans (2020) when studying true crime documentaries
Additionally, according to Machin and Mayr (2013), although extensive research on media representations of crime and crime-fighting in the field of Media and Cultural Studies, and Criminology, there has yet to be much research done on this topic in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) Indeed, one of the few studies about the representation of crime is that of Machin and Mayr themselves where the UK television series Crimewatch was analyzed through the multimodal CDA (MCDA) and the transitivity system frameworks Outcomes of the study showed that certain types of crimes and criminals in the shows were represented in a way that may “feed an atmosphere of mistrust and fear” to the public, which may serve the intention of the news and television to orient the public‟s view of such crimes
One of the studies about so-called criminal justice in literary text is that of Md Saiful Alam published in 2020 Alam‟s (2020) research was an interdisciplinary study of the short story “A Hanging” written by George Orwell The transitivity system was utilized to analyze the narrator‟s description of a criminal execution The findings of the studies showed that Orwell‟s choices of processes and participants not only represented his experience as a bystander in the story but also his anti-imperialist view and argument against the capital punishment system (Alam, 2020) Therefore, readers can interpret the intended meaning of the story through Orwell‟s employment of the transitivity system
From the above-mentioned literature, it is noticeable that research on experiential meaning in movies remains limited, and true crime documentaries are yet to be explored linguistically, especially using the SFL approach Thus, this study hopes to contribute to literature surrounding true crime documentaries and transitivity analysis It should also be noted that the study carried out by Machin and Mayr investigated how the film maker and the show producers represent the crimes, which can very likely serve a different intention other than reporting the crimes Therefore, looking at the way a criminal is presented by the victim themselves, as this research aims to do, can offer a new perspective as well as a comparison as to how it differs from that presented by the media Furthermore, this research also hopes to cover the perspective of the people directly involved in the incidents, not just from a bystander point of view such as what was covered in Alam‟s study The researcher particularly chose this documentary film as it contains the account of the victim herself and for it has not been a key data in any previous studies.
METHODOLOGY
Research design
This study is a discourse analysis in SFL approach, which employs both the qualitative and quantitative approaches with the former being the primary research method The qualitative approach is adopted to identify, describe and analyze the representational meaning in the clauses related to the perpetrator B which are spoken by the victim and the FBI agent Quantitative approach is chosen to measure the percentage of elements of the transitivity system used by the victim and the FBI agent.
Data description
The target data of this study is the spoken text produced by Jan (the victim) and agent Welsh (of the FBI), in the documentary film Abducted in Plain Sight (2017) Abducted in Plain Sight is a 91-minute true crime documentary directed by Skye
Borgman and produced by Top Knot Films in 2017 ("Abducted in Plain Sight - Wikipedia", n.d.) The documentary covers the two kidnappings of Jan Broberg in the 1970s through interviews of Jan herself, the Brobergs and the FBI agent in charge of the case
After its first release at the Mammoth Lakes Film Festival, the documentary has received great interest from the public It was then shown in many different film festivals and was later released on Netflix - one of the most popular streaming platforms worldwide Therefore, the target audience of the documentary film expanded, from a group of film festival attendees and critics to the general public - anyone with an Internet connection and a Netflix account.
Data collection
The data collection process was carried out as followed:
Step 1: The researcher transcribed the interviews presented in the documentary film, using the closed captions available on Netflix as a reference
Step 2: The researcher categorized the transcribed texts in accordance with the people producing the utterances, highlighting utterances produced by the victim and the FBI agent
Step 3: The researcher sorted through the pool of spoken text of the victim and the FBI agent to identify the clause directly relating to/describing the perpetrator.
Data analysis framework
This study utilizes Halliday‟s framework of analyzing experiential meaning to analyze the content of the collected texts This framework includes the transitivity system with its types of processes, participants and circumstances (condensed below) expressing representational meaning at clause level
The analytical framework (Halliday’s system of transitivity adapted from “Introduction to Functional Grammar” by Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014)
Mental cognitive desiderative perceptive emotive
Furthermore, it should be noted that elements of experiential meanings are realized within a context which can influence the interpretation of these elements Different from the rather fixed context of a typical scripted speech, the contexts in a film are continuously changing depending on who was talking and which situation was being recited Additionally, since the data of this study is a documentary films with real-life events and extracted exchanges of real people talking when interviewed, the interpretation of what people say - the linguistic elements - requires the combination of the language and the contextual situations Without the consideration of contexts, the meaning of clauses might be loss, resulting in the misidentification of process types Therefore, to further investigate the representation of B, the context of the exchange will also be taken into consideration
As presented in Figure 2, any process analysis would be scanned through the three contextual lenses of Field, Modes, and Tenor before the final analyzing decisions were confirmed Once the initial processes were decided, the participants were categorized, clauses were double-checked again leveraging the context of the exchanges.
Data analysis procedure
The collected data was analyzed following these stages:
Stage 1: Identified all the clauses and clause complexes in the utterances of the victim and the FBI agent
Stage 2: Selected clauses and clause complexes directly relating/describing the perpetrator for transitivity analysis
Stage 3: Analyzed the selected clauses in terms of Process, Participants, and
Stage 4: Counted the frequency of each type of Process, Participants, and Circumstances, and calculate the equivalent percentage
Stage 5: Divided the selected clauses into themes and considered how the perpetrator B is represented, utilizing the found statistics
Stage 6: Compared the findings found in the victim‟s utterances and that of the FBI agent to find the similarities and differences
Stage 5 and 6 provide answers for the research question number one and two respectively.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
Baseline information
The principal data of this study is the 91-minute documentary entitled Abducted in
Plain Sight (2017) which covers the case of Jan Broberg The documentary film features eight people as main interviewees, who are the members of the Broberg family, Pete Welsh, and Berchtold‟s brother and former neighbor However, this study only focuses on Berchtold (B for short), Jan Broberg (Jan for short), and Pete Welsh (Welsh for short) Throughout the 91-minute documentary, excluding all types of recordings presented (tape recordings, court recording and news reports), there are 183 exchanges, in which Jan has
50 exchanges while Welsh has 26 After watching and thoroughly analyzing details of the film, the following baseline information could be drawn out
Jan Broberg was the first born of Robert “Bob” Broberg and Mary Ann Broberg She has two younger sisters - Karen and Susan The Brobergs lived in a seemingly safe neighborhood in Pocatello, Idaho, USA Bob Broberg owned a flower shop in town while Mary Ann was a chorister at the local church In the early 1970s, it was at this church that Mary Ann acquainted Robert Berchtold - a business man who had recently moved to town Robert Berchtold had a family of his own with five children He was a church member, a pillar of the community and was described as an individual who possessed “an effervescent, wonderful personality” by Bob Broberg himself With such charisma, Berchtold quickly became close friends with the Brobergs before manipulating the parents and kidnapping one of their children
Jan Broberg was kidnapped by Berchtold twice at ages twelve and fourteen The first time, Berchtold tricked Jan‟s parents into thinking he was taking her horseback riding but actually took Jan traveling to Mexico in a motorhome During this time, Berchtold brainwashed Jan into thinking they were abducted by aliens and she must accomplish the mission of having a baby with the “male companion” (Berchtold) to save the planet and protect her sister, Susan They were found by the Mexican law enforcement in Mazatlán five and a half weeks later However, at this point, Jan had yet to realize she was kidnapped and brainwashed, thus she kept every detail of the incident as secrets - just as Berchtold asked Berchtold was going to be prosecuted for charges of kidnapping when he and his wife threatened to disclose “dirty laundry” between him and Bob Broberg For this reason, the Brobergs signed an affidavit and Berchtold was let go
During the two years leading up to the second abduction, Jan was still brainwashed and somewhat controlled by Berchtold He abducted Jan again and enrolled her into an all-girls boarding school under a fake name She was found around four months later However, it was not until she reached the age of sixteen did she realize she was duped Afterwards, Jan gradually disclosed the details about the incidents to her family and started speaking up to raise awareness on the topic of kidnapping and child abuse
Agent Welsh was brought into the scene five days after the first abduction took place At that time, he had been an agent of the FBI for about six or seven years and had yet to encounter a pedophile case as such Agent Welsh went on to be the agent working on the case of Jan Broberg for the next three years, investigating both the first and second kidnapping
With the specific aim of discovering the representation of the B through Jan and Welsh‟s accounts, the analyzed data are clauses produced by Jan and Welsh, referring to
B as a primary subject and/or indicating B‟s actions As a result, 146 clauses were selected, in which 76 clauses were taken from Jan‟s exchanges and 70 from Welsh‟s These clauses primarily describe B‟s character, thought process, feelings for Jan, actions and crimes Transitivity analysis of the selected clauses reported 146 processes, 259 participants and 70 circumstances The following sections will discuss the categorization, characteristics and functions of these transitivity components in detail.
Findings
The selected clauses are categorized into six process types namely material, verbal, mental, relational, existential and behavioral The distribution of these process types as a whole in Jan and Welsh‟s selected clauses can be condensed in Table 4
Distribution of process types in Jan and Welsh’s selected clauses
Generally, the frequency of occurrence of material process is much higher than that of the other five, constituting more than a half of all clauses Mental, relational and verbal processes respectively take the second, third and fourth place with 15.8%, 14.4%, and 11.6% correspondingly The two smallest groups are existential and behavioral processes, both accounting for merely 2.1%
A closer look at Jan and Welsh‟s collected data can be condensed in Figure 3 below It is observable that when describing B, both Jan and Welsh primarily utilize material process as it accounts for almost half of Jan‟s selected clauses and the majority of Welsh‟s
Distribution of process types in Jan and Welsh's collected data
In terms of distribution in Jan‟s selected clauses, verbal and mental processes both come in second with 13 out of 76 clauses, followed closely by relational process with 12 clauses On the other hand, mental process and relational process are the second and third most used process types in Welsh‟s selected clauses while verbal process only occurs in 4 out of 70 clauses The two remaining process types, existential and behavioral, are only present in clauses taken from Jan‟s account of B
Participants in Jan and Welsh’s selected clauses
Participant Frequency of occurrence Percentage
Throughout Jan and Welsh‟s clauses representing B, there are 259 participant functions of transitivity analysis whose frequency of occurrence is demonstrated in Table
5 above As can be seen from Table 5, coinciding with the distribution of process types, the most common participants found are goal and actor of material process, with 22.4% and 23.6% respectively Additionally, other participants such as beneficiary and medium also make up 1.9% and 0.8% of all participants Material process and its respective participants are utilized in the majority of the chosen set of clauses to describe and demonstrate B‟s activity and criminal behaviors
Clause A.18 and he definitely had his hands on me
Ranking second in terms of presence is phenomenon (8.5%), closely followed by senser (7.3%), which aligns with the frequency of mental process, their corresponding process type These elements primarily serve the purpose of depicting B‟s thought process and love for Jan, as can be seen in the examples below
He wanted to get them out of the way.
He almost was as concerned that it was an enjoyable experience for me as it was obviously for him.
Like verbal process, verbiage and sayer ranked third in terms of frequency of appearance with 7.3% and 6.2% respectively, while receiver only accounts for a mere 3.1% Verbal process and its participants are mainly used by Jan to recite B‟s utterance which in turn further demonstrate his thought process and criminal behaviors
"Tell your family that I brought you on a vacation, and that I made a mistake I took you too far away I didn't tell your family like I should have."
He said: "You will have no other contact with any other men, you know, even with your dad."
Participants of relational process also frequently occur throughout Jan and
Welsh‟s account of B Carrier and attribute respectively account for 5.4% and 6.9% of the total frequency percentage whilst value, token, possessed and possessor only make some appearance Therefore, it is evident that relational clauses primarily serve to characterize B, as exemplified below
It was a person that I so loved and so trusted, and was familiar to me.
Process Participant Participant Process Participant
Robert Berchtold was a close friend of theirs, a neighbor.
Similar to their corresponding process type, existent and behaver rarely occur throughout Jan and Welsh‟s account, constituting only 1.2% and 0.8% correspondingly
In Jan and Welsh‟s account of B, there are 70 circumstances found These circumstantial elements can be summarized in the following table
Circumstance of transitivity analysis in the selected clauses
Circumstance Frequency of occurrence Percentage
It is observable from Table 6 that location occurs the most in the selected clauses, making up a half of the total occurrence of circumstance Furthermore, these circumstances used in the selected clauses primarily construe the spatial location where the processes unfold rather than the temporal one
He tried to get to two other little girls in Pocatello before their parents cut him off,
Participant Process Participant Circumstance Circumstance
Actor Material Goal Location (Spatial) Location
Following these circumstances of location is manner with 21.4% which is only half of the occurrence frequency of location Manner circumstances, in the selected clauses, are used to construe the way in which B carried out his crimes and his interaction with Jan
So, he s separating her from her family as fast as he can.
Over 14% of all the circumstantial elements in the collected clauses belong to the cause category Interestingly, these elements mainly construe the purpose of the process rather than the cause
He gave the guard his gold ring in order for the guard to let him talk to me.
Participant Process Participant Participant Circumstance
Actor Material Beneficiary Goal Cause (Purpose)
Clause B.29 he was giving her sleeping pills to make his job a lot easier.
Participant Process Participant Participant Circumstance
Actor Material Beneficiary Goal Cause (Purpose)
Circumstances of extent are utilized 6 times throughout the collected clauses of
Jan and Welsh, accounting for 8.6% As spatial extent did not appear in neither Jan nor Welsh‟s clauses, these elements focus on construing the temporal extent over the spatial one
He s to report to jail within three months.
Actor Material Location (Spatial) Extent (Temporal)
Matter, role and contingency only account for 2.9%, 1.4% and 1.4% of all the circumstantial elements respectively There are no circumstances of angle found in the entirety of the selected clauses.
Answers to research questions and discussion
3.3.1 Answering research question 1: Representation of B through Jan and Welsh’s account
3.3.1.1 B as a well-liked ordinary man
Similar to the findings of Machin and Mayr (2013), B‟s character was also primarily represented by relational process To be specific, among the modes of relational process - attributive, identifying and possession, attributive relational clauses were favored the most by both Jan and Welsh in describing B‟s character
Unlike the child abuser presented in Crimewatch, Tranter, whose image was found to have been “monsterized”, B‟s image was represented in much “kinder” light While, according to Machin and Mayr (2013), Tranter appeared as an “odd” individual who was easily identifiable as a criminal, B was represented as a fairly typical businessman B‟s character was realized by attributive participants like “a Pocatello businessman, a member of their LDS faith and a pillar in the community” and “a handyman” who
“owned a furniture store” Therefore, it can be inferred that he was not only a seemingly ordinary man, he was also very respected and well-liked among his community as “he had lots of friends”
More importantly, he was not a stranger If Tranter was depicted without details of his victims nor his relationship with his victims (Machin and Mayr, 2013), B‟s image was built on his relationship with people around him as well as his victim Agent Welsh described him as “a close friend” and “a neighbor” of the Brobergs - the family whose daughter he kidnapped twice From Jan‟s perspective, he was “like a second father” who she and her sisters even referred to by an endearing nickname “B” In support of this, Jan‟s initial relationship with him was demonstrated through mental clauses, stating she she saw him after waking up from the sleeping pills (completely oblivious that she was kidnapped by this man) she felt relief since in her eyes, he was still someone who is
“familiar”, someone she “so loved and so trusted”
Another noteworthy point is that B was not crafted to appear as a “psycho” nor an arrogant criminal mastermind like Tranter was in Crimewatch Tranter was made to appear as an individual who “feels above the law” (Machin and Mayr, 2013), whereas Jan denoted that B was exchanging looks with her, as if he was scared, when they were taken by law enforcement
Pedophilia, as defined by the Encyclopaedia Britannica, is a psychosexual disorder involving adults who have sexual interest or attempt to engage in sexual act with prepubescent children Therefore, pedophile is generally understood as someone who is sexually interested in underage children
The image of B being a pedophile surfaced through attributive relational clauses produced by agent Welsh, stating that B “had an infatuation for young girls” and what B and Jan had was “an unnatural relationship” Other than that, when denoting this aspect both Jan and Welsh almost only employed mental clauses
Mental clauses are processes of sensing which construe a quantum of change in the flow of events taking place in one‟s own consciousness Mental process includes four subtypes of sensing which are perceptive, cognitive, desiderative and emotive (Halliday
& Matthiessen, 2014) Among these four subtypes, both Jan and Welsh primarily utilized emotive and cognitive mental processes to realize the image of B as an individual who has pedophilia tendency B‟s abnormal affection towards Jan was revealed through mental clauses recited from his letter to Jan It is also of note that most of the clauses denoting B‟s feelings for Jan were accompanied with a circumstance of manner, expressing the respective intensity Some examples of this are “I | need | your love | more now than anything on this earth” and “I | can do no more than love | you | every minute of my life”
B‟s odd obsession with Jan as a prepubescent child was emphasized even more by Welsh and Jan‟s revelation Welsh stated, using a possessive relational clause, that B hung up a “great, big, huge poster-size picture of Jan inside his motor home” Additionally, Jan revealed that later on, when she was getting older, he was not as communicative, as if he “was losing interest” as she was growing out of the age group that he was attracted to
Agent Welsh revealed that previously, B had attempted to approach two other little girls in the area, fortunately, he failed This indicates that his incident with Jan was not a one-time thing, that he was someone who deliberately sought out young girls Additionally, once he had found his desired little girl, he would target not only the girl but also everyone around her In this case, he set his eyes on Jan and her parents He first befriended the parents to gain their trust and get access to Jan Afterwards, he proceeded to eliminate everything and everyone that was standing in between him and Jan This type of behavior and mindset was clearly represented by a series of material clauses More precisely, verbs such as “targeted” and “destroyed” was employed, directly describing his predatory behaviors
B then proceeded to employ some manipulation tactics He started off by putting up a wall, separating Jan from Karen - the sister with whom she shared a room From then on, he slowly isolated Jan from her own family, from her support system, and basically tore down “the defense of the Brobergs” He also deceived Jan by feeding her lies about how she was half-alien and she must “have a baby” with him to save the world
If she failed to do so, if she told anyone about their “interaction” or if she had any contact deceived and threatened her, creating an alternate reality where she was completely dependent on him These behaviors, combined with Jan‟s judgment of B being a “master manipulator”, displayed B as a manipulative predator
Throughout the sharing of Jan and Welsh, B‟s criminal behaviors were gradually revealed Naturally, material process was the most favored process type employed in depicting this aspect of B Material process, as previously discussed, is the process of doing-&-happening, construing the concrete changes in the physical world Therefore, the implementation of this process type contributes to highlighting B‟s activities and their impacts Transformative material clauses were frequently employed with Jan being the affected participant Some examples are “he | definitely had his hand on | me” and “he | was molesting | her” It should also be noted from the two examples mentioned here that in reciting the same type of actions, agent Welsh used a more direct verb “molesting” compared to Jan expression of “has his hand on me”
Within 3 years, Jan was taken twice The first incident happened after B lied to Jan and her parents about taking her horseback riding while in reality, he “picked her up” after her piano lesson, gave her “allergy pills” and took her on a trip during which he brainwashed her In an attempt to mislead the police, he even tried to fabricate a crime scene: “he | left | a lot of blood | so he could have an excuse that somebody kidnapped them” As for the second abduction, he had manipulated her into leaving a letter, making it seemed as if she had left on her own accord After having taken her for the second time, he gave her under a fake name and “enrolled” her into an all-girl Catholic school, using the fake identity of a CIA agent for himself Along with setting up an elaborate lie of him being in the CIA for the nuns at the school, he also consistently lied to law enforcement about Jan When asked about Jan‟s disappearance, B told FBI agents “You better catch her You better find her Somebody‟s got her” as if that “somebody” is not him Additionally, after he was arrested, he “convinced” two of his jail mates to set fire to Jan‟s dad‟s flower store, saying he would “give each one of them a thousand dollar a month” In brief, B‟s criminal behavior as an abductor is filled with deception and rather bold moves - impersonating a law enforcement officer and solicitation to commit arson
Summary and major findings
This research explores how the abductor B is represented in the 91-minute documentary film entitled Abducted in Plain Sight (2017) through the sharing of Jan (the victim) and Welsh (the FBI agent on the case) The documentary was shown in many different film festivals and was eventually published on Netflix - one of the world‟s most popular streaming services - thus making the general public its target audience The purpose of the documentary in general and of Jan in particular is to share Jan‟s story thereby educating the public about this type of criminal
Transitivity analysis reveals that both Jan and Welsh favored material process as it accounts for 54.1% of the total distribution of process types Ranking second, mental processes account for around a sixth of all the transitivity processes analyzed These mental clauses were mostly employed to represent B‟s feelings for Jan and his thought process Closely coming in third is relational process with 14.4% It is of note that attributive relation is the most frequently occurring among the subtypes of relational process Verbal clauses take up over 11% of all the analyzed processes, mainly displaying B‟s conversation with Jan Existential and behavioral processes come last, both account for a mere 2.1%
As regards research question 1 of “How is B represented by the accounts of the victim and the FBI agent?”, thorough analysis revealed that the perpetrator B was primarily represented through material, mental, relational and verbal processes He appeared in the documentary as a seemingly typical businessman who is well-liked, a pedophile, a predator, and a criminal who was involved in child abduction, impersonation of a law enforcement officer, solicitation to commit arson and stalking
As for the second research question of “What are the differences and similarities in the way B is represented by the victim’s description and that of the FBI agent?”, it was found that that the victim represented B through interaction whilst the FBI agent represented him through observation The reasons for this lie in the difference in Jan and Welsh‟s purpose, expertise and relationship with the perpetrator.
Implications
The aforementioned findings suggest that there is a certain pattern in the victim‟s recount of her experience - a diverse use of process types and including herself as the affected, receiving participant Therefore, forensic linguists as well as other law enforcement officers may consider looking closer into this pattern to validate a victim‟s account Moreover, this pattern can be utilized to construct a particular set of questions that can facilitate the victim's recount of incidents
Additionally, it is of note that the FBI agent appeared convincing due to his frequent implementation of circumstances and use of neutral language throughout his sharing With this knowledge, teachers and students of English in Vietnam can consider using similar tactics when composing a formal and/or persuasive piece of writing.
Limitations of the study
Due to the limitation of time and scope, this study only explores the representational meaning in the spoken text of two out of eight main interviewees featured in the documentary film and compares the representation of the perpetrator B in the two collected sets of spoken text It has not analyzed other visual and audio elements as well as the spoken text of other interviewees presented in the documentary to precisely examine the representation of B in the entire 91-minute film Moreover, this research only investigated the realization of experiential meaning in the selected spoken text and has not examined the other component of the ideational metafunction - logical meaning.
Suggestions for further study
Considering the aforementioned limitations, further studies can be conducted to examine the realization of logical meaning Researchers can also explore audio and visual elements in combination with linguistic ones to produce a deeper, more comprehensive investigation of the representation.
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