‘Anyone in my shoes will end up like me’: Female inmates’ discourse of responsibility for crime

Abstract

Drawing on conversation analysis and Billig’s rhetorical strategy of particularization, this chapter examines how female inmates attribute responsibility for their crimes in the context of prison by focusing on how they orient interlocutors prior to narration of climactic moments of violence and violation. The findings indicate that different discursive strategies are used to enhance their orientations – not only for background information purposes in preparing interlocutors interactionally and emotionally for the following narration of criminal acts, but to diffuse or evade their responsibilities in implying that anyone in their shoes would end up like them – without flouting implicit rules prevalent in China’s prisons that inmates should explicitly ‘show admission of guilt and acceptance of the judgment’. The article concludes with a discussion of implications of such an attitude of ‘irresponsibility for their past’ for future directions of the talking program provided in China’s prisons.