Very little or any of the research within social language about different cultures of silence has been devoted to the norms of silence which exists within the speaking community of prison and which is shared by both inmates and staff. The purpose with the essay has therefore been to, from earlier research, investigate what the norms of silence in prison are, how these affect inmates and staff in their attitude toward each other and the communication between them, and if there are similarities in the norms of silence between the two groups and how these are expressed, regulated and applied within the speaking community compared with other cultures of silence. The essay takes it point of departure within theory of social language and how one uses the sound of language, words and turns in a correct way according to the norms and attitudes that exist within a speaking community and focus foremost around the culture of silence and its norms for silence and secrecy that exist within the speaking community which is shared by both inmates and staff in prison. The empiric collection has been done through qualitative method in combination with introspection, participation observation and interviews plus questionnaires which later have been interpreted and compared with earlier research. Four respondents, all of them staffs who have been or are active within the Swedish correctional system and have possessed varying posts, were interviewed or had to answer questionnaires which aimed to make the respondents to think about and to confirm the existence of a culture of silence. The result of the essay showed that staff, like inmates, have norms for silence and that staff in meeting with inmates shows varying degrees of attitudes, dependent if there’s about a closed respective an open ward, so that the verbal communication is affected by an informal attitude towards the inmates which is more accepted in open than compared with closed wards within the group of staff because the level of security is higher. Through the investigation of which norms of silence there are within the group of staff, generally, and how these are expressed and regulated within the speaking community through highlighting experiences and attitudes to better understand and explain the meaning of silence in different circumstances, and to compare the results in the essay with earlier science in order to bring forward similarities and differences in silence among inmates and staff with other cultures of silence, the essay has showed that there’s a culture of silence with norms of silence not only within prison, i.e. among inmates and staff, but within all speaking communities, which affect the communication with other groups or cultures negative, and that the formation of attitudes, i.e. negative social representation of others, and appliance and maintenance of the culture of silence is dependent on informal leaders which has a high status within the group.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hig-23741 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Byström, Tony |
| Publisher | Högskolan i Gävle, Avdelningen för humaniora |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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