Tagged: stigma

Speech, Identity, and Losing the Accent

The voice isn’t often taken as a subject for Sociological analysis, despite affecting and representing a great range of highly sociological topics such as social stratification and identity, amongst many others. Taking the voice as an object of study can be incredibly illuminative, as trends in the way we speak are a clear indicator of wider social changes, as well as being highly applicable to social theory. I started thinking about this after hearing a radio programme on the BBC, that...

Stigma and the Associations between Mental Illness and Violence in the Media

On February 12th, Amy Bishop walked into a meeting of the Biology department at The University of Alabama, where she had recently been denied tenure, and murdered three colleagues. On February 18th, Joseph Stack flew a stolen plane into a building that housed, among other workplaces, a number of FBI offices in Austin, Texas.  He, too, killed several people. Both are tragic events. Both were acts committed by clearly violent individuals and are possibly related to emotional or psychological problems. While Bishop had a history of violence, most...

‘What’s it all about, Alfie?’

                                                                                                       by paulabowles Once again the emotive issue of teenage pregnancy has hit the headlines in the UK. The recent news that 13 year old Alfie, and his 15 year old girlfriend Chantelle have become parents, has sparked a frenzy occupying all branches of the media from the broadsheets to the tabloids and the BBC to YouTube, as well as attracting the attention of senior politicians. Although, very young, Alfie and Chantelle are by no means, the youngest children to...