The language of justice: Exposing social and criminal justice discourse

Previous work in critical criminology, sociology and the broader study of social and criminal justice argues for the powerful presence of social control in the U.S. This research demonstrates how social control is built, maintained and changed by the labor of moral entrepreneurs in everyday social and criminal justice discourse and by the habits of language they produce. By performing a variety of justice language studies and building a "Language of Justice" critical language theory, this investigation traces the processes that give rise to social meanings around issues of social and criminal justice and tracks how these meanings become symbolic in the entire discourse about crime and justice in our social life. This work also maps how moral entrepreneurs define justice situations and social and criminal justice meanings in everyday life through their work of framing the language used to discuss, interpret, and shift practices and policies in social and criminal justice. Through studies of common justice language phrasing, such as "tough on crime," as encountered in media, and through an examination of the justice language of interviewed moral entrepreneurs, it is demonstrated that modern social and criminal justice discourse reflects a denial of the radical constructed character of social and criminal justice ideas and practices. Public justice discourse is found to operate in and out of a field of social control concerns whose categories, e.g. "crime," "criminals," etc., are perceived as definitions handed down from an authoritative source (from ontological definitions about human nature to epistemological definitions given by theological language, etc.), and not constructed by the everyday maintenance of language work. Because language defines reality, inherently attends to ideological functions, and in time becomes structurally hegemonic, suppressive and colonizing of other subjugated experiences, ideologies, and languages, "Language of Justice" research works to denaturalize justice language to interpret whether or not we are achieving our claimed justice principles.