The Language of Evaluation in the Narratives by the Magdalene Laundries Survivors: The Discourse of Female Victimhood

Abstract

Abstract Drawing on Martin and White’s Appraisal Theory, we study the language of evaluation in a corpus of interviews selected from the archives of The Magdalene Oral History Project. Apart from being deprived of proper food, clothing, and their identity, many of the women who spent their lives in Ireland’s Magdalene institutions had been, or were, sexually assaulted, and physically and psychologically abused. Their criminalization led them to long-lasting incarceration for no apparent reason and, years further on, prevented them from developing any active social voice. Thus, the discursive patterns in these texts can be seen as the symptom of ‘the discourse of female victimhood’, which is mainly characterized by their difficulty to express their emotions and their opinions, and their tendency to avoid mentioning what happened to them and who the agent was. The Magdalene survivors felt both hatred and remorse, and seemed to be able to speak about their painful experience only by silencing others’ liability, while making self-reproach and sympathy go hand in hand in their construal of both their past and themselves.