The discursive construction of certainty and uncertainty in the scientific texts of forensic psichiatry

The objective of the scientific communication was to produce reliable and valid theoretical-methodological frameworks and research contexts, in order to obtain control margins and predictability. Furthermore, in this field, some proposed contents were “applicable” to the daily life of people: if some information regarding a disease or a treatment was proposed as “certain”, the scientific community was more likely to transform words into reality; if uncertainty should prevail, the application of those cognitions will be enacted more “cautiously”.

Most of the time, the opening words of papers emphasized the social relevance of the proposed themes through assertive strategies, such as the references to public and social life, to services and to legislation as well as to mass media. This trend complied with the “mission” assigned to the introduction in a scientific paper, which was mainly aimed at establishing the author's “research territory” and at creating a “niche” for their contribution to occupy (Gross, Harmon, & Reidy, 2002).

The position within a “niche” is usually supported through “quotations”. This practice provided a solid grounding and a powerful enhancement of the proposed claims. Although quotations mainly showed what we can label a “problematic- critical” nature - aimed at highlighting the many possible scenarios and thus at keeping a high level of debate - they sometimes took an “assertive-narrative” object. In this case, they could guarantee the impression of being “grounded” in the scientific tradition and endorsed by some external” forms of legitimation (e.g. previous empirical evidences showing similar results and/or proposing consonant perspectives). Beside quotations, further external references were indicated, e.g. authorities or public services. They had the additional function of reassuring the interlocutors also in the “ethical” domain, in accordance with the scientific field.

In general, the “rhetoric of reassurance” was foremost established in the methodological approach. This kind of “methodolatry” sought a high degree of precision, through the references to percentage data and statistical analysis. In example 1, this mode offered the opportunity to compare the “values” concerning different pathologies, thus giving more credibility and certainty thanks to the use of the shared code of figures.

Ox. 1: “Humphreys et al. (1992) estimated that 20% [...] Volavka et al. (1997) estimated that 20% [...] Of the 17% of patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, 9% were violent in the first 20 weeks after discharge. This compares with a violence prevalence of 19% for depression, 15% for bipolar disorder, 17.2% for other psychotic disorders, 29% for substance misuse disorders and 25% for personality disorder alone” (Walsh et al., 2002, p. 491).

Other recurrent rhetorical strategies adopted by the authors of the texts to “assure” and “convince” the readers about the validity of their assumptions consisted of precise illustrations of the procedures, as well as of the exposition of the reasons for each choice. In this way, the reader was involved “behind the scenes” of the research, to further enhance the construction of a trust agreement with the scientific community.

More generally, the rhetoric of reassurance was carried out by textual metadiscourse markers, such as logic connectors, gloss practices (`however', `also', `in addition', `therefore'), frame and endophoric markers (`for example', `for two reasons', `for three reasons', `three main implications'). These linguistic expressions anticipated and/or state authors' intentions about the structure and evolution of the text; therefore, they favored the construction of expectations and enable a more aware reading of the same. The efforts to provide precise and meticulous demonstrations, combined with the use of the meta-discourse, gave strength to argumentation, as it was based on legitimation and justification.

Though, while the textual meta-discourse principally acted upon the organizational level of the discourse, in the attempt to make clear connections, definitions and conclusion, authors also used the relational meta-discourse that was more clearly oriented to establish a relationship of trust between them and the ideal scientific community to whom their texts were addressed,. This objective was pursued by means of some specific argumentative strategies:

a) the strategy of sincerity, enabling the authors to either articulate reasons or provide clarifying inserts, sometimes contrasting even among themselves (e.g. “In contrast to one of our initial hypotheses”);

b) the strategy of dialogism, which allows the authors to take in adequate esteem others' positioning (Hermans and Gieser, 2012) and to exhibit the capacity of dialogue among the various claims;

c) the strategy of collaboration, aimed to emphasize the “collaborative” nature of their own approach, as well as the “constructive” function of knowledge of their own text, considering the “model reader”.

The whole corpus was characterized by the efforts of connection with the territorial services which operate prevention, treatment and/or detention: they were constructed through proposals, suggestions, references to duties and responsibilities, attempts to provide economic quantification of (missing) interventions and to attribute a numerical value to more “qualitative” factors.

The Rhetoric of Limitation

The social-epistemic rhetoric of “social reassurance” was mainly focused on the construction of an interpretative proposal of the dangerousness of the mentally ill as much “certain” as possible. To this purpose, in most sections the papers justified the limits of their own work, in line with the complexity of forensic psychiatry.

This function was constructed by means of various argumentative strategies working both “explicitly” and “implicitly”. Sometimes long and argumentative lists of limits were found, expressed by lexical and syntactical expressions evidently related to uncertainty: for example, “Nevertheless, there is still uncertainty about [...] It is doubtful whether it should be [...] The ethical dilemma remains”. Otherwise the provided explanations were presented as “uncertain”, “possible” or “potential”. Furthermore, their work was framed in a mainly incomplete scenario, made up of partial considerations, failures, lack of details. Therefore, it was almost impossible for readers to take a stance, to orient themselves and to seek certainties.

The rhetoric of the “limit” was also acted through the pragma-linguistic indicators of mitigation. In accordance with the “functional” typology proposed by Caffi (2001), “hedges” weakened the illocutionary force of the statements. They operated through modelizers of the epistemic commitment (Kochelman, 2007) (e.g. “perhaps”, “probably”), subjectivizing (and thus restricting) epistemic certainties as well as through a massive use of modal verbs (at the conditional mode). On the other hand, “bushes” decreased the enunciator's commitment to the contents by means of negation (“It is important not to be constrained by”) and mitigated choices of lexicon, such as approximations (“somewhat”, “approximately”).

The social-epistemic rhetoric of the “limit” was also detectable through more holistic strategies aimed at reducing the range, the value or the certainty of their claims. These modes operated at a textual level and assumed an essential role, since they were focused on validating the argumentation:

a) rearranging the hierarchy, which consists of attributing importance to a rationale with the aim of replacing another one (e.g. “It is therefore important to highlight that the pathways and mechanisms leading to violence in patients with schizophrenia should not be reduced to one set of risk factors”);

b) dilution, that is grading the level of precision. In other words, the Grice's maxim of quantity (1975) is openly violated, by using phrases such as “This usually involves [...] but is intended to [...] more were known [...] It is generally assumed that... often”;

c) lateralisation, which enables to extend the range of possibilities. Sometimes it may also act as exemplification, thus making a case “one of many” (e.g.: “For example, a child psychiatrist may be unimpressed [...] But a criminologist or epidemiologist might take...”).

As for the space-time management, authors can also “keep the distance” from the exposed position through the paradigm of eventuality: in this case, they aimed at opening possible worlds by constructing hypothetical statements. The texts presented many references and projections on future scenarios as possible contexts for doubt resolution. These discursive acts emphasized the impossibility of setting certainties “here and now” for the limited, partial or precarious results.

In addition, we found a continuous argumentation swinging, which ended up assuming a “sinusoidal” trend. In particular, this fluctuation involved both the assertive/uncertain style throughout the text and the “confirmation”/“disconfirmation” intention carried out by the literature. It even happened that the same factor was firstly assessed in terms of convenience and then in terms of problems, that being “the first” to have performed a certain activity represents either a source of pride, or a necessary cautious mention. This sinusoidal trend can create a feeling of “precariousness”, in opposition with any search for stability and cognitive closure. Most of times, authors can even keep the distance from their own results and explicitly invoke “caution”, especially when the application of results is at stake.

Discussion and Concluding Remarks

Forensic psychiatry must accept the challenges provided by two worlds that have to reciprocally enhance for an ambitious enjeu, namely the search for stability, order and justice. Discursive practices primarily try to give order to distant requests and domains as well as to settle disputes and problems. In the discursive “genre” examined here - the scientific paper - texts have a well-structured form that makes it reliable to the reader.

Dealing with the connections between psycho-pathological epidemiology and criminal behaviors, the enunciators proceed through an “assertive” and rigorous mode, in the attempt to produce effective contributions to the theoretical and empirical debate. Overall, the strategies adopted support the social-epistemic rhetoric of “reassurance” because the articles provide cognitive guarantees to the scientific community, firstly by connecting the accuracy of the proposed work to the solidity of the reported literature.

However, the research on social dangerousness of the mentally ill persons fails the cognitive “closure” that would come from the application of its results to the services, the institutional contexts and the pertinent laws. The so complex issues at stake suggest the enunciators to give voice/words to the social-epistemic rhetoric of the “limit”. It operates in many ways, ranging from the role of the quotations in the introductions to the many declared shortcomings at the end of the paper. The authors confer a limited significance to their own results, with few certainties and much food for thought, deferring the possibility of contributing to decisive choices or actions to another (future) text; therefore, they avoid assuming definitive responsibilities and propose marginal applications for their results. In addition, expressions showing modesty, honesty and prudence are often recurrent. Such caution is suggested by the desire to obtain approval within the scientific community and to reduce the probability of criticism or refusal while encouraging a space of discussion between experts. This also means to emphasize the limits of scientific knowledge and to clearly inform the judicial system, redefining its expectations and interventions.

Our research tried to investigate the (un)certainties of law and psychiatry. The two social-epistemic rhetoric indicated in this paper corroborate the awareness that, in assessing the social dangerousness of the mentally ill person, the eventual “judicial” measures - claimed through the communicative register of law and justice - had to connect with the communicative language and register of the “social- sanitary” sciences in order to ascertain the mental functioning of the perpetrator and of the victim of crime, and to relate it to the context. For this reason, the forensic- psychiatric and psychological evaluation resulted also as a narration, an activity that focuses on the semantics, on the processes of symbolization and on the attribution used by the actors. It is time for the clinical world of psychology and psychiatry to better integrate with the forensic one: even if the hope of such an integration is accompanied by uncertainty, the probability of its success exceeds the one of tossing a coin.

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