Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

Adolescent Suicide Through the Lens of 13 Reasons Why: A Corpus Based Study

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https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/41687r69m

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  • With growing recognition of adolescence as the time in which suicidal thoughts and behaviors first occur, early identification and intervention systems in schools have become an international priority. Understanding and incorporating language indicators associated with the core psychological and interpersonal processes of adolescent suicidality could provide promising tools for school practitioners. Corpus linguistic research has identified several consistent verbal markers across written and spoken, formal and informal, and expressive or fictional texts. This dissertation research draws upon these findings along with interpersonal suicide theory to investigate potential replications and practical implications in the language of 13 Reasons Why (13RW), young adult “suicide fiction’s” most popular representation. The dissertation is composed of two research arms; Research Arm A looked at psychological and linguistic suiciderelated language within Jay Asher’s 13RW novel. Research Arm B looked at the same verbal markers in the context of the 13RW web TV series dialogue. Informed by the literature, Research Arm A sought to examine the level of 21 specific linguistic and psychological variables associated with youth suicide. Both examinations were conducted using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software. To ascertain if unique levels of these variables were present, this novel was compared against general novel norms using inferential statistics. Results encountered included the following rates higher than novel norms: (a) first-person singular three times higher; (b) second person two times higher; (c) present time focus one and a half times higher; and (d) causal explanation thinking style one and a half times higher. Research Arm B employed the same methodology as Arm A but examined the first season dialogue of the mass media Netflix series adaptation of 13RW. For this arm, the comparison norms were from a large database of TV series subtitle texts. For Research Arm B, the findings included the following rates higher than TV subtitle norms: (a) first person singular one and one-third higher; (b) second person one and one-third higher; (c) friend one and a half times higher; and (d) present focus one and a half times higher. These results show how the 13RW texts have their own ways of using language and hint at features of the emerging "suicide fiction" genre that are linked to known signs of suicidality in teens. These results extend previous corpus linguistic research findings related to suicidality language markers and suggest the need for additional applications of this research specific to adolescent school community populations. Implications for school-based suicide prevention include support for the incorporation of core language analysis concepts to strengthen evidence-based practices and efficiency.
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