Metaphors of Loss: Murder, Bereavement, Gender, and Presentation of the ‘Victimized’ Self
Bibliographic record
Abstract
When a loved one is murdered, there is a profound impact on the selves of those left behind. In this paper, three competing conceptions of self are considered in order to help us to understand the impact on the social selves of such survivors, and the pragmatic ways in which selves struggle with this event in their social interactions. Building upon the insights of earlier work on victimization, bereavement, gender and self, a qualitative study of survivors found that these individuals metaphorically expressed a profound ‘loss of self’, which they further generalized beyond themselves in terms of a ‘ripple effect’ spreading through their families and community. Survivors elaborated this loss of self through five further ‘metaphors of loss’, which indicated various dimensions within this root metaphor. These included: (1) permanent loss of future; (2) violating devastation; (3) being a ‘different person now’; (4) loss of control; and (5) loss of innocence. These metaphors were generally expressed either in an effort to express the inexpressible, or as a presentation of self in circumstances where survivors’ victim status was questioned. While all of these metaphors were expressed across gender lines, all except loss of control were predominantly expressed by the female gender, and each exhibited variations in emphasis which shed light on gendered identities as an aspect of self. Moreover, these were disproportionately expressed by bereaved parents and siblings. In the end, the metaphors emerging from such a profound emotional experience may teach us much about both the fundamental dimensions underlying self and identity, the micro-political strategies utilized in interaction, and the process of constructing social problems.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.023 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".