Forensic Discourse Analysis of Suicide Reports in the Philippines

Abstract- Suicide incidents garnered the greatest number of cases during the COVID 19 pandemic and the most crucial investigative aid to explore language in this trend is through the narrative report. This study argued that the use of appropriate cohesive language elements in a forensic text could affect the accuracy, organization, and comprehensibility of the suicide reports. This study made use of forensic discourse analysis which uncovered the language features present in suicide reports, examined their uses, and identify the way the causes of suicide are reflected in the narratives. The corpus of the study was composed of the suicide reports from the selected municipalities in Quezon province. The study revealed that language features are explicitly present in suicide reports. However, a limited number is found in lexical cohesion. Reference and conjunction are usual while substitution and ellipsis are scarce. The features are communicated to refer, connect, and create word sense within the forensic context. The lexical categories that revealed the causes of suicide are characterized as semitechnical and regular which reflects the use of language in the legal context. By this, it was recommended that: (a) the aspiring and the standing legal officers shall continue exposing themselves to advanced opportunities that maintain and enrich their ability in writing an accurate and comprehensive narrative with an emphasis on the function and limitation of the cohesive devices; and (b) experts should revisit the situation of language for specific purposes to identify the language behavior which could best serve the interest of justice while writing an informative, accurate, and coherent report.