CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE AND THE PRINT MEDIA: A CASE STUDY OF LINGUISTIC CONSTRUCTION OF MORAL PANIC

Abstract

Research on crime has been of great importance to researches. Recent days have witnessed monumental increase in the news of child sex abuse in the world in general and in Pakistan in particular. This phenomenon has aroused concern on an epic scale in the society and generated moral panic. Moral panic was first coined by Cohen (1972) in England and he gave its first model. Cohen provided a processual model and what role mass media and social control actors play in constituting moral panic. Erich Goode and Nachman Ben Yehuda structured Attributional model in 1990 and it placed more emphasis on definition than cultural processes. The present paper is a case study and aims at looking at linguistic devices which constitute moral panic in crime news stories about child sexual abuse. The data consist of crime news about Zainab rape and murder case. Both model of Cohen and Goode & Bin Yehuda are employed to explore the linguistic devices. The case study meets the criteria laid down in both models and the findings show that moral panic was constructed in these news.