“It Wasn’t His Fault”: Narrative Strategies of Stigma Management in Families of Incarcerated Men

“It Wasn’t His Fault”: Narrative Strategies of Stigma Management in Families of Incarcerated Men | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article “It Wasn’t His Fault”: Narrative Strategies of Stigma Management in Families of Incarcerated Men Angelika Cieślikowska-Ryczko This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-7780820/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Grounded in narrative identity theory and biographical approaches to discourse, this study explores how family members of incarcerated men use autobiographical narration to manage stigma and construct morally coherent selves. Drawing on the Biographical-Narrative Interpretive Method (BNIM) and Sykes and Matza’s theory of neutralisation techniques, the analysis focuses on how narrators linguistically reframe their relatives’ criminal actions through justification, mitigation, and blame displacement. Based on interviews with adult children and parents of prisoners, the study identifies discursive strategies employed in argumentative narrative segments, where speakers position themselves in relation to moral responsibility and public discreditation. These stories function as tools of boundary work and identity repair, enabling narrators to preserve dignity and sustain relational bonds. By showing how narrative becomes a resource for navigating morally compromised subject positions, the article contributes to sociolinguistic and narrative inquiry into stigma, identity negotiation, and the micro-politics of storytelling in structurally marginalised contexts. Narrative identity Stigma management Neutralisation techniques Narrative sociology Autobiographical narrative interviews (BNIM) Introduction For decades, biographical research has served as a powerful lens for exploring broader social processes embedded in individual life trajectories. Rooted in interpretive paradigms, it allows scholars to examine how individuals make sense of their experiences through narrative forms. Although not a new method (Bertaux, 1990 ; Bertaux & Kohli, 1984 ; Rosenthal, 1990 ; Thomas, 1998), the so-called “biographical turn” in the social sciences (Chamberlayne et al., 2000 ) revitalised interest in using life stories as empirical material – including oral histories, autobiographical accounts, and diary-based narratives (Schütze, 2012a ; Wengraf, 2001 ; Znaniecki & Thomas, 1976 ). More recently, researchers have expanded this orientation by incorporating visual tools such as life diagrams (Söderström, 2019 ) and metaphorical frameworks like the life-as-a-film method (Canter & Youngs, 2015 ). Simultaneously, scholars working within discourse-based approaches to narrative (De Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2011 ) have called for attention to “micro narratives” and “small stories” – short, fragmentary, and interactional tellings that occur in everyday contexts and serve as dynamic sites of identity negotiation. This approach shifts the analytical focus away from fully formed autobiographical narratives toward the moment-to-moment construction of self through language. At its core, biographical inquiry remains an interpretive enterprise anchored in participants' experiences and in the linguistic means through which meaning is structured and conveyed. By integrating both macro-level biographical approaches and micro-level narrative practices (Georgakopoulou, 2006 ; De Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2011 ), this study treats narrative as both structure and performance, foregrounding its role in the discursive construction of moral selfhood. Building on this interpretive tradition, the present study applies biographical methods to the domain of criminology. This research draws on the tradition of the Chicago School of Sociology and its early applications of interpretive methodology in criminology (e.g., Shaw, 1930 , 1931 ). It examines autobiographical narrative interviews (Rosenthal, 1990 ; Schütze, 2012a ; Wengraf, 2001 , 2012 ) with family members of incarcerated individuals – an often-overlooked population who experience various forms of stigma, exclusion, and identity disruption (Arditti, 2003 ; Gueta, 2018 ; Szczepanik, 2021 ). Researchers have argued that the families of prisoners represent marginalised and largely invisible groups, both in support systems and in scholarly research (Cunningham & Baker, 2003 ; Gueta, 2018 ; McCarthy & Adams, 2019 ; Poehlmann-Tynan & Turney, 2021 ). Although not offenders themselves, these family members are socially implicated in the criminal status of their relatives. Their narratives provide valuable insights into the management of moral identity under conditions of social discreditation. Based on 29 interviews with adult children of prisoners and 17 with parents of incarcerated sons, this analysis explores how narrators use linguistic strategies – particularly neutralisation techniques (Sykes & Matza, 1957 ) – to manage dissonance and construct morally coherent accounts of self and kin. Focusing on argumentative segments within spontaneous narration (Schütze, 2012a ), the study conceptualises these moments as sites of discursive positioning (Bamberg, 1997 ), where narrators perform identity work that is situated, evaluative, and interactionally embedded. Such strategies function not only as psychological coping mechanisms but also as sociolinguistic resources for the negotiation of moral selfhood in criminogenic environments. This perspective underscores the narrative agency of speakers as they construct morally liveable positions under social constraint through micro-level storytelling. Theoretical framework Neutralisation techniques as linguistic strategies At the moment when a person fully realises that something significant has disrupted their life – something that radically alters their previous understanding of themselves and the surrounding world – they begin to seek new definitions for their life-world. In such a moment of relative normalisation, they embark on a search for explanations and meaning-making narratives to account for the suffering they have experienced (Kaźmierska & Waniek, 2020 , p. 121). Researchers (Arditti et al., 2003 ) have described the experiences of prisoners’ families as marked by the denial of opportunities to express suffering and the invalidation of their voices. Social reactions compel these families to construct a ‘new identity’ and defend their image not only in the eyes of the public but also before themselves. This process often leads to what Riemann and Schütze ( 2012 ) describe as a trajectory of suffering – characterized by dissonance, incongruity, conflict, and the disruption of everyday life. The theoretical model proposed by Sykes and Matza ( 1957 ) can be applied to identify and interpret the dissonance experienced by prisoner families. Although originally designed to explain the behaviour of individuals who violate social norms, subsequent researchers (Fukukawa, 2019; O’Boyle, 2014; Piacentini et al., 2012 ; Sikorska, 2016 ) have expanded its relevance to a broader range of social behaviours. In this study, the framework by Sykes and Matza ( 1957 ) functions as a set of sensitising concepts (Blumer, 1986 ), helping to characterise the narrative and linguistic strategies used by participants to navigate moral ambiguity and social stigma. Rejecting the classical notion of deviant subcultures, the authors argued that criminals, like other members of society, maintain an attachment to dominant social norms. Violating these norms, however, produces a distinct sense of discomfort and anxiety. According to their theory, in order to act against prevailing norms, individuals must employ specific rationalisation strategies known as neutralisation techniques. These involve a narrative redefinition constructed by the speaker to justify a committed act or internalised belief. Both verbalised and internalised, such strategies enable individuals to alleviate psychological tension. As a result, they construct a positive self-image and reinterpret the social reactions they encounter (Sykes & Matza, 1957 ; Topalli, 2005 ; Wagner et al., 2017 ). In autobiographical narratives, the recognition of these techniques allows researchers to observe how participants construct new meanings for morally ambiguous events. Within this context, autobiographical narration represents a selective reconstruction of past experiences processed through reflection. Through oral storytelling, individuals explain to themselves – and to others – how they have become the people they are today (McAdams, 2011 ; Riemann & Schütze, 2012 ). This interpretive process is inherently dialogical and interactional: narrators not only recall but also reposition themselves and others within a morally intelligible framework (Bamberg, 1997 ; De Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2011 ). Such positioning is not neutral or static – it reflects narrative agency and stance-taking that is shaped by available cultural scripts and expectations. In this sense, neutralisation techniques are not only psychological defences but also discursive practices that construct socially acceptable selves in the midst of moral threat. Sykes and Matza ( 1957 ) proposed five classic neutralisation techniques. The first is denial of responsibility , in which the offender disclaims any connection to the act, portraying it as accidental, unintended, or driven by external forces beyond their control. Offenders question their own agency and influence over the event. The second is denial of injury , where the offender minimises or questions the extent of harm caused. Both the severity of the consequences and the criminal act itself are reframed as insignificant or non-damaging. The third is denial of the victim , which serves to delegitimise the victim by suggesting that they deserved the harm or that the act was a form of justified retaliation. This involves a reversal of moral roles between offender and victim. The fourth is condemnation of the condemners , wherein the offender shifts blame onto those who judge them. Society is portrayed as equally corrupt or hypocritical, thus undermining the legitimacy of condemnation. Offenders persuade themselves and others that their own behaviour is no worse than that of those passing judgement. The fifth is appeal to higher loyalties , in which the offender claims that the act was necessary to serve a greater good. The deviant behaviour is framed as a difficult moral choice made to protect family, community, or other overriding commitments. The crime becomes a ‘lesser evil’ justified by broader ethical imperatives. Although originally theorised in the context of deviant behaviour, this typology becomes particularly illuminating when applied to the narratives of those socially implicated in, but not directly responsible for, crime – such as the family members of incarcerated individuals. Their appropriation of these strategies in narrative form reflects a complex interplay of moral reasoning, identity negotiation, and discursive boundary work. The research project This study explores the familial crises provoked by incarceration, focusing on how relatives of prisoners reconstruct their life histories and make sense of suffering, stigma, and disrupted kinship ties. The study was guided by three interrelated research questions: How do relatives of incarcerated individuals navigate the emotional and social consequences of imprisonment? What linguistic and narrative strategies do they use to construct socially acceptable identities? In what ways do their stories reflect broader processes of moral negotiation and symbolic boundary work? Participants The study involved two primary groups of participants. The first group consisted of 29 adult children of prisoners, ranging in age from 18 to 75 years, all of whom had experienced the long-term incarceration of either a mother, a father, or both. The second group included 17 parents of incarcerated adult sons. In both cases, the narrators were not themselves involved in legal or correctional processes, but their proximity to imprisonment placed them in a morally ambiguous social space. Participants were selected through purposive sampling, with access facilitated by gatekeepers associated with NGOs, faith-based organisations, and correctional institutions. The inclusion criteria emphasized not only experiential proximity to incarceration but also the willingness and capacity to reflect narratively on that experience. Within this framework, narrators’ linguistic strategies became a central focus of the analysis – not merely as thematic content, but as situated discursive practices through which identities are constructed, negotiated, and contested. Given the sensitivity of the research topic, special attention was devoted to the ethical dimensions of participant recruitment, interaction, and data management. All interviews were conducted face-to-face in locations selected by the participants, primarily in their homes. This approach prioritized comfort and psychological safety, allowing narrators to exercise agency over the spatial and temporal conditions of disclosure. The decision to avoid remote interviews was informed by the understanding that in-depth narrative interactions rely not only on verbal communication but also on nonverbal cues-such as gestures, facial expressions, and bodily hesitations-which are often obscured in virtual settings. Establishing trust and relational rapport was central to the data collection process. Following Fielding et al. ( 2017 ), the research design emphasized the co-presence of researcher and participant as essential to eliciting complex, emotionally charged life narratives. Participants were fully informed about the study’s aims, the voluntary nature of their involvement, and their right to withdraw at any time. Explicit consent was obtained before and during each interview segment, with verbal markers used to indicate when recording began and ended. Throughout the study, I remained attuned to the ethical obligations that arise when engaging with vulnerable populations and distressing life experiences. This included a commitment to responsive ethics (Pascoe, 2022) – an approach that prioritizes continuous, empathetic attunement to participants’ verbal and affective signals. Research in socially sensitive fields such as imprisonment demands not only procedural compliance but also a reflective and compassionate stance that acknowledges the asymmetrical power relations between researcher and participant (Moran & Caetano, 2022 ). Finally, participants were offered the opportunity to review and approve their interview transcripts. All data were anonymized and processed in accordance with institutional and national ethical standards. The study received approval from the National Science Centre under protocol No. (protocol number withheld for anonymisation purposes). Analytical approach This study employed a biographical-narrative methodology rooted in the interpretive traditions of Fritz Schütze ( 2012a , 2012b ), Gabriele Rosenthal ( 2012 , 2018 ), and the Biographic-Narrative Interpretive Method (BNIM) developed by Tom Wengraf ( 2001 , 2012 ). Together, these approaches provide a structured yet adaptable framework for accessing lived experience through storytelling – particularly in contexts shaped by trauma, disruption, and social marginalisation. They also offer analytical tools for examining how speakers construct and position themselves in morally complex situations through narrative discourse. The biographical-narrative method In general, biographical histories are a form of in-depth interview designed to capture the entire life trajectory of the interviewee. However, there is no single, universally established concept of biographical research. This study employed two complementary analytical approaches. I drew on the traditions of the German school, represented by Gabriele Rosenthal and Fritz Schütze, as well as the interpretive framework of the Biographic-Narrative Interpretive Method (BNIM) developed in the UK. The decision to combine and apply these approaches stems from their particular usefulness in eliciting participants’ life stories, particularly suited to eliciting sensitive or difficult-to-access data. In Schütze’s approach, the emphasis is placed on eliciting a holistic, comprehensive life narrative from the participant. BNIM, by contrast, may be applied to the collection and interpretation of either full life histories or selected segments thereof. Crucially, the use of autobiographical narrative interviews allows for an in-depth exploration of both the biographical trajectory and the linguistic structures through which experience is narrated – such as metaphorical language, argumentative sequences, and overall narrative form. The methodological framework comprises two primary components: (1) the technique of autobiographical narrative interviewing, understood as a tool for gathering comprehensive life stories from participants; and (2) a coherent analytical procedure grounded in the sequencing of life events and the interpretation of discursive and linguistic structures. A key aspect of this biographical approach is identifying the inseparable relationship between narrative form, discursive positioning (Bamberg, 1997 ), and the speaker’s biographical experience at each stage of the research. Disorganised, difficult, and unprocessed experiences are reflected in the linguistic layer of the narrative. At the same time, a chaotic, fragmented narration – full of pauses and interruptions – often emerges from emotionally charged or morally ambiguous life events. This is what Schütze ( 2012a ) refers to as a trajectory of suffering. In this study, such narrative disfluencies are not treated as noise but as meaningful indicators of narrative agency – points where narrators struggle to position themselves in relation to a difficult past. This perspective encourages researchers to move beyond the search for biographical facts toward an interpretive exploration of language and its nuanced meanings in the ongoing construction of the self. Data collection Autobiographical narrative interviews Narratives about the lives of family members were collected using autobiographical narrative interviews (Kaźmierska, 2016 ; Schütze, 2012a ). This technique allows narrators to construct comprehensive and in-depth biographical accounts with minimal researcher interference. At the outset, the researcher invites the participant to recount the story of their entire life, providing them with the time and space to do so it in their own words. No additional questions or prompts are introduced during this initial phase. According to Wengraf ( 2012 ), independently produced narratives allow researchers to understand life histories as they are perceived and experienced by the narrators themselves. The key to eliciting such a narrative lies in strict adherence to the interview structure, which consists of two main phases: the main narrative phase and the supplementary questioning phase. The first phase is essential for subsequent interpretive analysis. During this stage, the researcher must aim to elicit a life story that is not a series of responses to directed questions, but a spontaneous and uninterrupted narrative unaffected by the researcher’s presence (Kaźmierska, 2016 , p. 61). Storytelling should emerge from the narrator’s improvisational competence and be free from prior planning or rehearsal. The story should unfold spontaneously, constructed and shared in the ‘here-and-now’. In this phase, the researcher assumes the role of an active and attentive listener, closely following the narrator’s verbal cues. Once the narrator signals that the story is complete, the researcher proceeds to the questioning phase, asking for clarification or elaboration on points that were unclear, intriguing, or analytically significant. During this second phase, the researcher draws upon keywords and codes generated during the listening process. These keywords are typically drawn from the narrator’s own phrasing and vocabulary (Rosenthal, 2012 , p. 283). With the participant’s consent, the entire interview is audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim, preserving all salient features of the speech, including non-standard forms, pauses, stutters, dialectal variation, and other paralinguistic elements. These features are not treated merely as formalities of transcription, but as components of narrative performance that reveal speaker positioning, hesitation, and the emotional labour of storytelling. Analytical strategy and interpretation process A rigorously executed interview procedure enabled the transition to the analytical phase, which comprised two sequential stages (Schütze, 2012a , 2012b ; Wengraf, 2012 ). In the first stage, I conducted a step-by-step formal analysis of the transcripts, isolating narrative, descriptive, and argumentative passages from the interviews. On the basis of this initial selection, I organised each participant’s life story by distinguishing between those parts of the text that energise the narrative and actively reconstruct the course of events, and those that express opinions, self-representation, and definitions of the world and self-in-the-world (Kaźmierska & Waniek, 2020 ; Schütze, 2012a , 2012b ; Wengraf, 2012 ). Typically, this first analytical stage tends to present few difficulties. The chronological structure of the narrative is usually visible in the text, allowing the researcher to reconstruct an objective timeline of biographical events. However, the analysis of the second layer of the text requires more advanced interpretive work focused on linguistic structures. This stage benefits from the collaborative input of a team of researchers, who deliberate over multiple interpretive possibilities. The analytical process enabled the identification of distinct segments within the narration, including: (1) theoretical commentary, in which the participant expresses generalised attitudes toward life events; (2) background constructions, which are embedded within the main narrative line and serve to embellish or contextualise the core story; (3) fadeouts (German: Ausblendung ), referring to the partial or complete omission of information. These appear as sudden gaps or ruptures in narrative continuity, often reflecting the narrator’s attempt to avoid shame or emotionally charged topics; and (4) argumentative commentary, through which the narrator attempts to explain the problems surrounding them to both themselves and the listener. It is in these argumentative passages that narrators most often employ various neutralisation strategies (Kaźmierska, 2014 ; Schütze, 2012a ). At this point in the analysis, each textual segment was identified, interpreted, and assigned relevant analytical codes. Each interview was analysed individually. Once all narratives were coded, I moved to the final stage: comparing and consolidating the codes and conducting a thematic analysis within the framework of emergent analytical categories. During this phase, I observed a recurring link between argumentative segments and Sykes and Matza’s ( 1957 ) theory of neutralisation techniques. This prompted a reanalysis of the argumentative passages through the lens of criminological theory. The majority of argumentative statements appeared within the three leading thematic fields related to the characteristics of the imprisoned family member, other family members, and the behaviuor of the wider environment, such as co-workers, neighbours, and distant relatives. In these parts of the narration, the respondents did not directly report events, but rather characterised the behaviours of other people in the environment or presented their own opinions about them. The respondents used the most neutralisation strategies when characterising an imprisoned son or parent. Results Diagnosing neutralisation strategies in argumentative narratives The thematic analysis of the interviews revealed two primary patterns in the deployment of neutralisation strategies. First, narrators drew on discrete techniques corresponding to Sykes and Matza’s ( 1957 ) classic typology—such as denial of responsibility, denial of injury, and condemnation of the condemners. Second, they employed hybrid strategies, combining elements from multiple techniques within a single narrative segment. These strategies were particularly salient in argumentative sequences—passages in which narrators offered explanations, justifications, or evaluative commentary on morally sensitive experiences. Importantly, the use of neutralisation strategies varied across narrator groups. Parents more frequently employed composite forms, especially those aimed at minimising harm or challenging the credibility of victims. Their narratives often reflected a desire to mitigate the moral weight of their children's actions, positioning themselves as both protective and morally conflicted. In contrast, adult children of prisoners tended to rely on singular techniques, such as denial of responsibility or condemnation of the condemners, often in defence of their imprisoned fathers. These instances reflect attempts to protect a fragile filial bond while negotiating personal and social dissonance. The distribution of neutralisation strategies by narrator group is presented in Table 1 below. Table 1 Summary of neutralisation strategies by narrator group Neutralisation strategy Used by Parents Used by Adult Children Denial of Responsibility Occasionally used to explain lack of control over son’s behaviour. Frequently used to distance self from father’s crime. Denial of Injury Frequently used to minimise the impact of the offence. Rarely used. Denial of the Victim Occasionally used, often framed as provocation. Occasionally used, especially in cases involving conflict. Condemnation of the Condemners Occasionally used to criticise the justice system or media. Frequently used to delegitimise social judgment. Appeal to Higher Loyalties Frequently used to justify continued parental support. Occasionally used to defend family honour. Mixed Strategies Frequently used, blending several techniques. Rarely used-strategies tend to be more distinct. Further linguistic and functional characteristics of these strategies are summarised in Table 2 , which highlights how particular discursive resources operate across different narrative contexts. Table 2 Overview of Neutralisation Strategies by Narrator Group Neutralisation strategy Narrator group Linguistic features Function Denial of Responsibility Adult children & parents Hedging, metaphor, shifting agency (e.g., “slave”, “had to”) Externalizing guilt; preserving family dignity Denial of Injury + Denial of Victim (Mixed) Parents of incarcerated sons Minimizing language, victim discrediting, vague quantifiers Undermining harm and victimhood; reducing blame Condemnation of the Condemners Adult children (esp. daughters) Evaluative contrast, moral inversion, role reversal (e.g., mother vs father) Reassigning blame; restoring dignity to the incarcerated Appeal to Higher Loyalties Adult children with imprisoned fathers Justificatory framing, references to familial duty, conditional modality ("so we could") Framing crime as necessity; affirming relational and moral loyalty The examples below illustrate how such strategies are discursively constructed across diverse narrative contexts. Notably, these constructions are not simply defensive reactions but also function as identity work, wherein narrators navigate complex moral terrain by reinterpreting agency, guilt, and relational roles. These patterns point to a broader narrative process in which speakers engage in the active reconstruction of moral selfhood. By drawing on culturally recognisable discursive repertoires – such as denial, minimisation, or reversal – they negotiate the tellability of their stories (Georgakopoulou, 2006 ) and claim social legitimacy for stigmatised identities. In this sense, neutralisation strategies serve not only as tools of moral justification but also as narrative positioning devices (Bamberg, 1997 ) through which speakers recalibrate their alignment with dominant moral orders. Example 1. One-sided technique: Denial of Responsibility Among the most frequently observed discursive strategies was the denial of responsibility, whereby narrators framed the incarcerated relative’s actions as compelled by external forces, determined by circumstances, or beyond their control. This technique was commonly employed by both adult children and parents of prisoners, often serving to reframe criminal behavior in a morally neutral or sympathetic light. Below are two examples that illustrate this strategy in practice. Diana (adult daughter of a prisoner) “This great friend of my dad [said in an ironic and sarcastic tone], who theoretically gave him a great chance in life and offered him to become the director of the bank, turned out to be his yyyy big BOSS, and my dad became somewhat a slave. As it later turned out, my dad had to give bribes to the man who had simply blackmailed him. At some point, my dad started to be afraid that if he didn’t do it, he would have some problems... this man really had a HUGE influence”. ( Diana, 25, daughter of a white-collar offender convicted of bribery and embezzlement; sentenced to two years in prison ) Diana frames her father’s criminal behavior as the outcome of external coercion and betrayal. Despite acknowledging his powerful position as a bank director, she employs sarcastic intonation (“this great friend”) and metaphorical reversals (“slave,” “BOSS”) to depict him as a victim rather than a perpetrator. Modal hedging (“somewhat,” “had to”) and narrative sequencing (from opportunity to blackmail) construct a morally constrained trajectory. Through these linguistic choices, Diana performs a discursive repositioning of her father-denying his agency and restoring moral dignity through a narrative of entrapment. Joanna (mother of an incarcerated son) “Karol’s childhood was not problematic. Well, he was a boy… but overall, he was good and didn’t cause any problems that were out of the ordinary. He performed well at school. However, later in life, he fell into bad company. It was this one boy. He moved nearby and had grown up on the streets from a young age. His parents had never cared for him. This boy was outside from morning to night and had to learn how to get by on his own. He taught my son all these things. Fortunately, this ‘friend’ is also in prison, and justice caught up with him… I know you can’t blame anyone else, but my son was impressionable, and his friends were important role models for him”. ( Joanna, 45, mother of a son convicted of assault and theft; served four years in prison ) Joanna constructs a clear moral dichotomy between her son’s normative childhood and the deviant trajectory initiated by a peer she identifies as pathological. Her account is structured around a temporal and causal shift: from innocence to corruption, from school success to delinquency – facilitated by a “friend” with a damaged background. Although Joanna verbally acknowledges shared responsibility (“I know you can’t blame anyone else”), the dominant affective alignment of her narrative functions to externalise blame. Through strategies such as contrastive evaluation, external attribution, and subtle moral distancing, Joanna presents Karol as impressionable and misled – not intrinsically deviant. The friend is rendered as a contaminating agent, while her son’s fall is portrayed as situational rather than dispositional. In doing so, she simultaneously protects her son’s moral image and secures her own position as a responsible, caring mother caught in circumstances beyond her control. Taken together, both accounts reveal how denial of responsibility operates as a narrative resource for maintaining moral coherence within family roles. Rather than direct rebuttals of guilt, these stories enact discursive repositionings that preserve relational bonds, mitigate stigma, and negotiate tellability (Georgakopoulou, 2006 ) in the face of criminal disruption. They illuminate the complex work of identity in narrating deviance – not through denial of fact, but through the moral reframing of causality and agency. Example 2. Mixed technique: Denial of Injury and Denial of Victim This combined strategy appeared exclusively among parents-particularly mothers-whose sons had participated in violent offenses involving multiple individuals. The narrators simultaneously minimized the severity of harm and undermined the legitimacy of the victim, thereby constructing a morally diminished view of the offense and diffusing their child’s individual accountability. This convergence of strategies demonstrates a layered form of narrative defence, in which harm is rhetorically diminished and the victim symbolically disqualified. Anna (mother of an incarcerated son) “Mark [my son] was in a juvenile detention center and correctional facility but for minor offenses. He stole some scrap from a junkyard and that's how it happened... And… he also hit a girl with a tiny little stone, but she reported it to the police, and because she had a mental illness, they believed her, and that’s how it ended up for my son”. ( Anna, 65, mother of a son convicted of repeated theft and robbery; served multiple prison terms ) Anna frames her son’s offences as trivial and his victims as unreliable. She refers to the stolen materials as “scrap,” minimising the seriousness of the theft, and characterises the assault as involving “a tiny little stone.” Additionally, she undermines the credibility of the female victim by emphasizing her mental illness and implying false accusation. These rhetorical strategies operate as a joint denial of injury and denial of victim, reducing the perceived harm while casting doubt on the victim’s moral and psychological authority. The use of diminutives (“tiny little stone”), vague terminology (“some scrap”), and implicit disqualification of the victim (“they believed her”) reflects a narrative strategy aimed at moral realignment. Anna does not explicitly deny her son’s actions, but frames them as misunderstood, exaggerated, or undeserving of punishment. This reveals a narrative positioning in which the speaker seeks to protect kinship ties by reconfiguring the meaning and seriousness of deviance. Through this framing, her son’s identity is reinterpreted from deviant actor to misunderstood youth. Julia (mother of an incarcerated son) “So, there was a fight because my son’s friends went to the store, and there were other men there, foreigners, or something. I don’t know for sure because I wasn’t there, but that’s what I heard, and that’s how I see it. Those other men by the store were probably Ukrainians, and there were more of them... so I don’t know how it’s possible that they got beaten. A fight broke out. One of those Ukrainians got seriously messed up, his head was busted, and his eyes were damaged. But my son was in the store at that time, and during all the commotion, he came out because he was worried that his friends were taking too long. Then someone calls the cops... From what my son said... he just kicked once… but the cops arrived just then and arrested everyone. His friends had lawyers and luck, so they got out of jail. One of them went abroad. My son took the blame for everything. [...] The politicians want us to be nice to foreigners. But it looked like only one side was blamed. In our country, the ‘others’ can burn and stomp around, but we’re supposed to be nice and polite”. ( Julia, 60, mother of a son convicted of assault and theft; served four years in prison ) Julia explicitly states that she was not an eyewitness, yet proceeds to narrate the events in detail. Her account is marked by uncertainty (“I don’t know for sure”), distancing (“from what my son said”), and epistemic mitigation. At the same time, she reconstructs her son’s role as peripheral-present but uninvolved, and ultimately self-sacrificing. His single act (“he just kicked once”) is positioned against the exaggerated outcome (“seriously messed up”), thus dissociating him from the consequences. Julia’s discourse blends denial of injury (by minimizing the harm caused by her son) with denial of victim (by questioning the legitimacy of the injured party, emphasizing their foreign status). Her narrative also includes ideological justifications rooted in nationalist rhetoric (“we’re supposed to be nice to foreigners”), which reframe the incident as a larger sociopolitical injustice. The victim’s otherness becomes a symbolic resource for constructing grievance and injustice, shifting focus away from the act itself. Through this lens, her son becomes not a perpetrator but a scapegoat – unfairly criminalized within a biased system. This construction reveals how narrative identity work often extends beyond the personal into collective scripts of injustice, normativity, and belonging. Example 3. One-sided technique: Condemnation of the Condemner This strategy was observed exclusively among adult daughters of incarcerated fathers. Although the fathers had committed serious offenses that destabilized the family structure, these narrators redirected blame toward non-imprisoned mothers, portraying them as morally deficient. Through this discursive inversion, maternal figures were condemned for perceived weakness, disloyalty, or self-interest – particularly when they distanced themselves from the imprisoned father. Monika (daughter of an imprisoned father) “There was a moment when she [my mother] decided that she probably couldn’t handle dad’s imprisonment anymore, and that she wanted to divorce him. I don’t know how I reacted. I will never forgive her for filing for a divorce when dad was in prison! I believe we should have supported him instead of doing that. She stabbed him in the back... It was tough. Because I couldn’t understand why. Doesn’t mom love dad?! What will he do when he gets out?”. ( Monika, 25, daughter of a father convicted of drug trafficking; served five years in prison ) Monika’s narrative shifts the evaluative focus away from her father’s criminal actions and onto her mother’s emotional response to them. Despite implicitly acknowledging the hardship of incarceration, she recasts her mother’s decision to divorce as a profound moral failure—“a stab in the back.” This phrasing evokes betrayal and treason, while rhetorical questions such as “Doesn’t mom love dad?!” position the daughter as a loyal moral witness and the mother as emotionally deficient. Her account minimizes the father’s culpability by reframing the central moral rupture as the mother’s withdrawal of support. The incarcerated father is discursively repositioned as a suffering figure, deserving care and allegiance, rather than blame. The mother, in turn, becomes the agent of harm, not through action, but through emotional withdrawal. This form of condemnation-of-the-condemner shows how narrators reassign blame within the family to protect bonds with the imprisoned parent, portraying others’ actions as morally questionable. Crucially, it also shapes narrative identity through loyalty: Monika constructs herself by siding with the stigmatized parent and defending a threatened familial bond. Such storytelling reveals how narrative positioning (Bamberg, 1997 ; De Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2011 ) operates not only on the level of character construction but also within larger dynamics of kinship, solidarity, and identity repair. Example 4. One-sided technique: Appeal to Higher Loyalties This strategy emerged among adult children of prisoners who themselves had experienced parental incarceration during early childhood. Often lacking detailed or coherent memories of their imprisoned fathers, these narrators reconstructed their fathers’ criminal actions through justificatory framings that emphasized necessity, care, and family survival. Offenses were not denied, but instead reinterpreted as morally motivated acts committed in response to systemic hardship. Robert (son of an incarcerated father) “My dad did it because I was little, my sister was little, my brother was tiny. And he just did it because it was hard for him with money, and he did it so we could have things. Not for alcohol or anything like that, just so we wouldn't be without at home… Because Mom didn’t work… Because she was sick, she still is… So she didn’t work and Dad tried to provide us with everything so we wouldn’t miss anything… But he couldn’t make it work either”. ( Robert, 35, son of a repeat offender convicted of multiple thefts; served several prison sentences ) Robert's narrative explicitly acknowledges his father’s criminal behavior, yet reframes it as an act of paternal responsibility. Through repeated justifications-“so we could have things,” “not for alcohol”-he linguistically constructs a morally positive motive behind the offenses. His use of repetition, accumulative detail (“my sister was little, my brother was tiny”), and affective alignment (“Dad tried to provide us with everything”) function to reposition the father not as deviant, but as devoted. This narrative illustrates an appeal to higher loyalties strategy, in which criminal acts are legitimized through reference to family protection and economic survival. Robert’s stance emphasises familial obligation and care as overriding the illegality of the acts. In doing so, he restores moral coherence to the father’s identity and mitigates stigma by anchoring the offence within a framework of necessity and love. Robert presents his father’s crimes not as moral transgressions but as expressions of paternal responsibility. This strategy allows him to maintain emotional and moral coherence with the stigmatized parent while sustaining a coherent narrative about himself. The appeal to higher loyalties – caring for the family, a childhood marked by poverty, the mother’s illness – serves to neutralise stigma and imbue his biography with meaning in the context of familial trauma. Discussion The findings of this study demonstrate how family members of incarcerated individuals employ nuanced narrative strategies to manage stigma, moral ambiguity, and identity disruption. Using autobiographical narrative interviews, the analysis traced how speakers linguistically reframe the criminal actions of a loved one-often through justification, mitigation, or displacement of blame. These strategies were not random but structured responses to the social pressures of being morally implicated in someone else's criminality. In this sense, they functioned as discursive tools for restoring dignity, preserving relational bonds, and sustaining a coherent self-image in the face of public discreditation. A key insight that emerged is the relational embeddedness of linguistic strategy. Different narrator groups mobilised different techniques, reflecting their social roles and affective alignments. Parents of incarcerated sons often combined multiple techniques-particularly denial of injury and victim discrediting – suggesting a complex attempt to rationalise their child’s actions while still fulfilling a parental role. In contrast, adult children of prisoners frequently employed one-sided strategies such as condemnation of the condemners or appeals to higher loyalties, particularly when speaking about imprisoned fathers. This differentiation reflects the intergenerational complexity of narrative positioning: children strive not only to understand parental deviance, but to integrate it into a coherent identity without rupturing core attachments. Importantly, these findings also reinforce the value of analysing argumentative narrative segments-moments in the interview where speakers break the flow of storytelling to explain, defend, or emotionally react. These segments offer particularly fertile ground for identifying stance-taking, discursive alignment, and moral recalibration. Rather than being digressions or asides, they are central to the narrator’s ethical labour, revealing not only how the past is recounted but how it is morally rehabilitated through language. Moreover, the use of neutralisation techniques aligns closely with Goffman’s ( 1963 ) theorisation of stigma management. Participants, though not offenders themselves, occupy what might be called a “shadowed subject position” – socially marked by association and thus compelled to explain themselves. Their narratives become a form of discursive boundary work (Wetherell & Potter, 1992 ), where alignment, distance, and ambiguity must be continuously negotiated. As such, the findings underscore how moral reasoning is not simply cognitive or ethical but deeply linguistic-performed through narrative structure, lexical choice, and interactional framing. Importantly, these narrative choices were shaped not only by social roles but also by the limits of tellability (Georgakopoulou, 2006 ) – what could be said, to whom, and in what way, given the threat of moral judgment. Speakers navigated the blurred lines between what was socially reportable and what remained unsayable, adapting their stories to remain intelligible and acceptable in the eyes of the imagined listener. This research contributes to sociolinguistic scholarship by demonstrating how speakers use language to negotiate socially discrediting identities, and how narrative becomes a key site for the management of stigma in contexts of marginality. By foregrounding linguistic strategies within autobiographical storytelling, the study offers a nuanced account of how discourse reflects and reshapes the moral positioning of speakers embedded in criminogenic environments. Families of prisoners, especially the parents of incarcerated individuals, are burdened with an unwarranted sense of shame. The social environment perceives parents as being responsible for committing crimes (Jackson & Mannix, 2004 ; Szczepanik, 2021 ). Szczepanik ( 2021 , p. 85) drew attention to the problem of fulfilling parental roles in an unhealthy ‘conspiracy and secrecy’. Mainly mothers of prisoners who experience shame and fear of stigmatisation and rejection are afraid of publicly and openly supporting their imprisoned, demoralized children. In this situation, they explain their and their children's behaviour; moreover, they offer help implicitly, shaping a ‘public identity’ that conflicts with their authentic emotions and needs. I have always held the opinion that if your kid does that to you, kick him out. Now I understand parents who feel this pain but still help their children. I will always help him. He is my son (Benisty et al., 2020 ). This approach aligns with recent sociolinguistic work that emphasizes language’s role in constructing, resisting, and reworking subject positions under conditions of social constraint (e.g., Blommaert, 2005 ; Heller, 2003 ). Finally, this discussion affirms the importance of analysing not only what is told but how and why it becomes tellable in the first place. The emotional, moral, and social risks associated with narrating crime-adjacent experiences require speakers to construct narratives that are not only internally coherent but socially receivable. This study highlights how the limits of tellability shape the very architecture of narrative identity in stigmatized contexts. Conclusion Based on biographical narrative analysis, this study identified the various linguistic strategies employed by narrators during interviews. The focus was on autobiographical accounts provided by family members of incarcerated individuals-relatives who were not themselves perpetrators, yet remained strongly bound to the imprisoned father or son. The analysis demonstrates how empirical material can be interpreted through the biographical-narrative methods of Fritz Schütze ( 2012a ) and Tom Wengraf ( 2012 ). The step-by-step illustration of data collection, coding, and interpretation, anchored in a specific research problem, offers a valuable methodological contribution for qualitative scholars working in similarly sensitive terrains. In particular, it may guide those aiming to explore the lived experiences of marginalised individuals who grapple with painful or stigmatised life circumstances. In line with Gabriele Rosenthal’s ( 2012 , p. 279–281) assertion, this study affirms that a comprehensive and holistic understanding of (auto)biographical narratives—viewed across the entire life course – grants researchers deeper access to the interplay of personal events, social structures, and long-term consequences. Compared to isolated interview responses, macro-level narrative biographies enable insight into how participants make sense of their life trajectories and how they locate themselves within broader social worlds (Strauss, 1978 ). At the same time, this does not diminish the value of small stories or micro-level narrative fragments. As De Fina and Georgakopoulou ( 2011 ) argue, micro and macro narratives are not mutually exclusive but dynamically interrelated. A single narrative episode can function as both a micro-story with local, interactional relevance and as a window into broader identity work or social meaning-making. While macro-biographical narration lends itself to exploring ruptures, suffering trajectories (Riemann & Schütze, 2012 ), and long-term structural effects, small stories are equally valuable for tracing performative positioning, affective alignments, and discursive negotiations as they unfold. This dual focus enriches narrative inquiry by allowing researchers to move fluidly between the interactional and the structural, between momentary positioning and biographical coherence. Especially in contexts of marginalisation, this layered approach helps identify absences, silences, and narrative breaks – providing indirect access to unspoken pain and ambiguity. Crucially, such a methodology also amplifies the voices of people and communities often excluded from dominant historical and social narratives (Cockcroft, 2005 ; Rosenthal, 2012 ). Family members of prisoners, I argue, constitute precisely such a neglected group. The findings of this study confirm prior claims that the families of prisoners live under a burden of shame, trauma, and invisibility (Benisty et al., 2020 ; Gueta, 2018 ; McCarthy & Adams, 2019 ). Both adult children of prisoners and parents of incarcerated sons were found to employ a repertoire of argumentative strategies that helped them maintain a socially acceptable self-image and preserve a morally coherent representation of the imprisoned relative. The use of neutralisation techniques within their narratives reveals attempts to reduce emotional dissonance and reinterpret past events in ways that allow for personal dignity and relational continuity. Often, these family members do not fully accept the legal guilt of their loved ones. Instead, they engage in discursive labour to reframe criminality through mitigating explanations or moral justifications. Importantly, this suffering is rarely articulated directly. These findings align with Arditti’s ( 2003 ) observations that the distress experienced by prisoners’ families is frequently privatised and hidden. Moreover, the way that imprisoned relatives are perceived and morally evaluated shapes the nature and depth of support that family members are willing or able to offer (Benisty, 2022 ; Szczepanik, 2021 ). Finally, it must be acknowledged that conducting research in such morally sensitive spaces raises critical questions about epistemic position and ethical responsibility. The asymmetry between researcher and researched is amplified in criminogenic environments, where participants carry what Goffman ( 1963 ) termed a ‘discrediting burden’. These individuals are often positioned at the bottom of the social hierarchy, viewed through lenses of deviance and suspicion. This form of marginality renders them both socially excluded and ethically complex as research participants. In this regard, criminogenic environments pose methodological and ethical challenges not unlike those encountered in elite research settings (Desmond, 2004 ; Harvey, 2011 ; Ruan, 2020 ). Both are characterised by restricted access, asymmetrical power dynamics, and a heightened need for reflexivity. In navigating such settings, researchers must invest significant effort into preparation, trust-building, and the ongoing negotiation of ethical practice-ensuring that participants’ vulnerability is met with care, sensitivity, and accountability. At the same time, this study contributes to sociolinguistic theory by showing how narrative positioning and moral reasoning intersect in stigmatised contexts-revealing how language functions as a site of identity repair and social negotiation. Declarations Competing Interests The author declares that there are no competing financial or non-financial interests. 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Rooted in interpretive paradigms, it allows scholars to examine how individuals make sense of their experiences through narrative forms. Although not a new method (Bertaux, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR6\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1990\u003c/span\u003e; Bertaux \u0026amp; Kohli, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR7\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1984\u003c/span\u003e; Rosenthal, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR36\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1990\u003c/span\u003e; Thomas, 1998), the so-called “biographical turn” in the social sciences (Chamberlayne et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR11\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2000\u003c/span\u003e) revitalised interest in using life stories as empirical material – including oral histories, autobiographical accounts, and diary-based narratives (Schütze, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR42\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012a\u003c/span\u003e; Wengraf, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR54\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2001\u003c/span\u003e; Znaniecki \u0026amp; Thomas, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR50\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1976\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMore recently, researchers have expanded this orientation by incorporating visual tools such as life diagrams (Söderström, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR49\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e) and metaphorical frameworks like the life-as-a-film method (Canter \u0026amp; Youngs, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR10\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e). Simultaneously, scholars working within discourse-based approaches to narrative (De Fina \u0026amp; Georgakopoulou, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR14\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e) have called for attention to “micro narratives” and “small stories” – short, fragmentary, and interactional tellings that occur in everyday contexts and serve as dynamic sites of identity negotiation. This approach shifts the analytical focus away from fully formed autobiographical narratives toward the moment-to-moment construction of self through language.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e At its core, biographical inquiry remains an interpretive enterprise anchored in participants' experiences and in the linguistic means through which meaning is structured and conveyed. By integrating both macro-level biographical approaches and micro-level narrative practices (Georgakopoulou, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR18\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2006\u003c/span\u003e; De Fina \u0026amp; Georgakopoulou, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR14\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e), this study treats narrative as both structure and performance, foregrounding its role in the discursive construction of moral selfhood. Building on this interpretive tradition, the present study applies biographical methods to the domain of criminology.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis research draws on the tradition of the Chicago School of Sociology and its early applications of interpretive methodology in criminology (e.g., Shaw, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR44\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1930\u003c/span\u003e, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR45\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1931\u003c/span\u003e). It examines autobiographical narrative interviews (Rosenthal, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR36\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1990\u003c/span\u003e; Schütze, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR42\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012a\u003c/span\u003e; Wengraf, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR54\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2001\u003c/span\u003e, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR55\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e) with family members of incarcerated individuals – an often-overlooked population who experience various forms of stigma, exclusion, and identity disruption (Arditti, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR1\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2003\u003c/span\u003e; Gueta, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR20\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e; Szczepanik, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR48\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e). Researchers have argued that the families of prisoners represent marginalised and largely invisible groups, both in support systems and in scholarly research (Cunningham \u0026amp; Baker, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR13\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2003\u003c/span\u003e; Gueta, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR20\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e; McCarthy \u0026amp; Adams, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR29\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e; Poehlmann-Tynan \u0026amp; Turney, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR34\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e). Although not offenders themselves, these family members are socially implicated in the criminal status of their relatives. Their narratives provide valuable insights into the management of moral identity under conditions of social discreditation.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBased on 29 interviews with adult children of prisoners and 17 with parents of incarcerated sons, this analysis explores how narrators use linguistic strategies – particularly neutralisation techniques (Sykes \u0026amp; Matza, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR27\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1957\u003c/span\u003e) – to manage dissonance and construct morally coherent accounts of self and kin. Focusing on argumentative segments within spontaneous narration (Schütze, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR42\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012a\u003c/span\u003e), the study conceptualises these moments as sites of discursive positioning (Bamberg, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR3\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1997\u003c/span\u003e), where narrators perform identity work that is situated, evaluative, and interactionally embedded. Such strategies function not only as psychological coping mechanisms but also as sociolinguistic resources for the negotiation of moral selfhood in criminogenic environments. This perspective underscores the narrative agency of speakers as they construct morally liveable positions under social constraint through micro-level storytelling.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eTheoretical framework\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec3\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eNeutralisation techniques as linguistic strategies\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"BlockQuote\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt the moment when a person fully realises that something significant has disrupted their life – something that radically alters their previous understanding of themselves and the surrounding world – they begin to seek new definitions for their life-world. In such a moment of relative normalisation, they embark on a search for explanations and meaning-making narratives to account for the suffering they have experienced (Kaźmierska \u0026amp; Waniek, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR26\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e, p. 121).\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eResearchers (Arditti et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR2\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2003\u003c/span\u003e) have described the experiences of prisoners’ families as marked by the denial of opportunities to express suffering and the invalidation of their voices. Social reactions compel these families to construct a ‘new identity’ and defend their image not only in the eyes of the public but also before themselves. This process often leads to what Riemann and Schütze (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR35\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e) describe as a trajectory of suffering – characterized by dissonance, incongruity, conflict, and the disruption of everyday life.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe theoretical model proposed by Sykes and Matza (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR27\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1957\u003c/span\u003e) can be applied to identify and interpret the dissonance experienced by prisoner families. Although originally designed to explain the behaviour of individuals who violate social norms, subsequent researchers (Fukukawa, 2019; O’Boyle, 2014; Piacentini et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR33\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e; Sikorska, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR46\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e) have expanded its relevance to a broader range of social behaviours. In this study, the framework by Sykes and Matza (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR27\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1957\u003c/span\u003e) functions as a set of sensitising concepts (Blumer, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR9\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1986\u003c/span\u003e), helping to characterise the narrative and linguistic strategies used by participants to navigate moral ambiguity and social stigma.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRejecting the classical notion of deviant subcultures, the authors argued that criminals, like other members of society, maintain an attachment to dominant social norms. Violating these norms, however, produces a distinct sense of discomfort and anxiety. According to their theory, in order to act against prevailing norms, individuals must employ specific rationalisation strategies known as neutralisation techniques. These involve a narrative redefinition constructed by the speaker to justify a committed act or internalised belief. Both verbalised and internalised, such strategies enable individuals to alleviate psychological tension. As a result, they construct a positive self-image and reinterpret the social reactions they encounter (Sykes \u0026amp; Matza, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR27\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1957\u003c/span\u003e; Topalli, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR52\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2005\u003c/span\u003e; Wagner et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR53\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn autobiographical narratives, the recognition of these techniques allows researchers to observe how participants construct new meanings for morally ambiguous events. Within this context, autobiographical narration represents a selective reconstruction of past experiences processed through reflection. Through oral storytelling, individuals explain to themselves – and to others – how they have become the people they are today (McAdams, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR28\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e; Riemann \u0026amp; Schütze, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR35\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e). This interpretive process is inherently dialogical and interactional: narrators not only recall but also reposition themselves and others within a morally intelligible framework (Bamberg, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR3\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1997\u003c/span\u003e; De Fina \u0026amp; Georgakopoulou, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR14\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSuch positioning is not neutral or static – it reflects narrative agency and stance-taking that is shaped by available cultural scripts and expectations. In this sense, neutralisation techniques are not only psychological defences but also discursive practices that construct socially acceptable selves in the midst of moral threat.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSykes and Matza (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR27\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1957\u003c/span\u003e) proposed five classic neutralisation techniques. The first is \u003cem\u003edenial of responsibility\u003c/em\u003e, in which the offender disclaims any connection to the act, portraying it as accidental, unintended, or driven by external forces beyond their control. Offenders question their own agency and influence over the event.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe second is \u003cem\u003edenial of injury\u003c/em\u003e, where the offender minimises or questions the extent of harm caused. Both the severity of the consequences and the criminal act itself are reframed as insignificant or non-damaging.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe third is \u003cem\u003edenial of the victim\u003c/em\u003e, which serves to delegitimise the victim by suggesting that they deserved the harm or that the act was a form of justified retaliation. This involves a reversal of moral roles between offender and victim.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe fourth is \u003cem\u003econdemnation of the condemners\u003c/em\u003e, wherein the offender shifts blame onto those who judge them. Society is portrayed as equally corrupt or hypocritical, thus undermining the legitimacy of condemnation. Offenders persuade themselves and others that their own behaviour is no worse than that of those passing judgement.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe fifth is \u003cem\u003eappeal to higher loyalties\u003c/em\u003e, in which the offender claims that the act was necessary to serve a greater good. The deviant behaviour is framed as a difficult moral choice made to protect family, community, or other overriding commitments. The crime becomes a ‘lesser evil’ justified by broader ethical imperatives.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAlthough originally theorised in the context of deviant behaviour, this typology becomes particularly illuminating when applied to the narratives of those socially implicated in, but not directly responsible for, crime – such as the family members of incarcerated individuals. Their appropriation of these strategies in narrative form reflects a complex interplay of moral reasoning, identity negotiation, and discursive boundary work.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eThe research project\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis study explores the familial crises provoked by incarceration, focusing on how relatives of prisoners reconstruct their life histories and make sense of suffering, stigma, and disrupted kinship ties. The study was guided by three interrelated research questions:\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHow do relatives of incarcerated individuals navigate the emotional and social consequences of imprisonment?\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat linguistic and narrative strategies do they use to construct socially acceptable identities?\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn what ways do their stories reflect broader processes of moral negotiation and symbolic boundary work?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eParticipants\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe study involved two primary groups of participants. The first group consisted of 29 adult children of prisoners, ranging in age from 18 to 75 years, all of whom had experienced the long-term incarceration of either a mother, a father, or both. The second group included 17 parents of incarcerated adult sons. In both cases, the narrators were not themselves involved in legal or correctional processes, but their proximity to imprisonment placed them in a morally ambiguous social space.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eParticipants were selected through purposive sampling, with access facilitated by gatekeepers associated with NGOs, faith-based organisations, and correctional institutions. The inclusion criteria emphasized not only experiential proximity to incarceration but also the willingness and capacity to reflect narratively on that experience. Within this framework, narrators’ linguistic strategies became a central focus of the analysis – not merely as thematic content, but as situated discursive practices through which identities are constructed, negotiated, and contested.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGiven the sensitivity of the research topic, special attention was devoted to the ethical dimensions of participant recruitment, interaction, and data management. All interviews were conducted face-to-face in locations selected by the participants, primarily in their homes. This approach prioritized comfort and psychological safety, allowing narrators to exercise agency over the spatial and temporal conditions of disclosure. The decision to avoid remote interviews was informed by the understanding that in-depth narrative interactions rely not only on verbal communication but also on nonverbal cues-such as gestures, facial expressions, and bodily hesitations-which are often obscured in virtual settings.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEstablishing trust and relational rapport was central to the data collection process. Following Fielding et al. (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR16\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e), the research design emphasized the co-presence of researcher and participant as essential to eliciting complex, emotionally charged life narratives. Participants were fully informed about the study’s aims, the voluntary nature of their involvement, and their right to withdraw at any time. Explicit consent was obtained before and during each interview segment, with verbal markers used to indicate when recording began and ended.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThroughout the study, I remained attuned to the ethical obligations that arise when engaging with vulnerable populations and distressing life experiences. This included a commitment to responsive ethics (Pascoe, 2022) – an approach that prioritizes continuous, empathetic attunement to participants’ verbal and affective signals. Research in socially sensitive fields such as imprisonment demands not only procedural compliance but also a reflective and compassionate stance that acknowledges the asymmetrical power relations between researcher and participant (Moran \u0026amp; Caetano, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR30\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e Finally, participants were offered the opportunity to review and approve their interview transcripts. All data were anonymized and processed in accordance with institutional and national ethical standards. The study received approval from the National Science Centre under protocol No. (protocol number withheld for anonymisation purposes).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAnalytical approach\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis study employed a biographical-narrative methodology rooted in the interpretive traditions of Fritz Schütze (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR42\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012a\u003c/span\u003e, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR43\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012b\u003c/span\u003e), Gabriele Rosenthal (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR37\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR38\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e), and the Biographic-Narrative Interpretive Method (BNIM) developed by Tom Wengraf (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR54\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2001\u003c/span\u003e, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR55\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e). Together, these approaches provide a structured yet adaptable framework for accessing lived experience through storytelling – particularly in contexts shaped by trauma, disruption, and social marginalisation. They also offer analytical tools for examining how speakers construct and position themselves in morally complex situations through narrative discourse.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eThe biographical-narrative method\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn general, biographical histories are a form of in-depth interview designed to capture the entire life trajectory of the interviewee. However, there is no single, universally established concept of biographical research. This study employed two complementary analytical approaches. I drew on the traditions of the German school, represented by Gabriele Rosenthal and Fritz Schütze, as well as the interpretive framework of the Biographic-Narrative Interpretive Method (BNIM) developed in the UK.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe decision to combine and apply these approaches stems from their particular usefulness in eliciting participants’ life stories, particularly suited to eliciting sensitive or difficult-to-access data. In Schütze’s approach, the emphasis is placed on eliciting a holistic, comprehensive life narrative from the participant. BNIM, by contrast, may be applied to the collection and interpretation of either full life histories or selected segments thereof.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCrucially, the use of autobiographical narrative interviews allows for an in-depth exploration of both the biographical trajectory and the linguistic structures through which experience is narrated – such as metaphorical language, argumentative sequences, and overall narrative form. The methodological framework comprises two primary components: (1) the technique of autobiographical narrative interviewing, understood as a tool for gathering comprehensive life stories from participants; and (2) a coherent analytical procedure grounded in the sequencing of life events and the interpretation of discursive and linguistic structures.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA key aspect of this biographical approach is identifying the inseparable relationship between narrative form, discursive positioning (Bamberg, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR3\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1997\u003c/span\u003e), and the speaker’s biographical experience at each stage of the research. Disorganised, difficult, and unprocessed experiences are reflected in the linguistic layer of the narrative. At the same time, a chaotic, fragmented narration – full of pauses and interruptions – often emerges from emotionally charged or morally ambiguous life events. This is what Schütze (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR42\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012a\u003c/span\u003e) refers to as a trajectory of suffering.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn this study, such narrative disfluencies are not treated as noise but as meaningful indicators of narrative agency – points where narrators struggle to position themselves in relation to a difficult past. This perspective encourages researchers to move beyond the search for biographical facts toward an interpretive exploration of language and its nuanced meanings in the ongoing construction of the self.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Data collection","content":"\u003ch2\u003eAutobiographical narrative interviews\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eNarratives about the lives of family members were collected using autobiographical narrative interviews (Kaźmierska, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR25\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e; Schütze, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR42\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012a\u003c/span\u003e). This technique allows narrators to construct comprehensive and in-depth biographical accounts with minimal researcher interference. At the outset, the researcher invites the participant to recount the story of their entire life, providing them with the time and space to do so it in their own words. No additional questions or prompts are introduced during this initial phase. According to Wengraf (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR55\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e), independently produced narratives allow researchers to understand life histories as they are perceived and experienced by the narrators themselves. The key to eliciting such a narrative lies in strict adherence to the interview structure, which consists of two main phases: the main narrative phase and the supplementary questioning phase.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe first phase is essential for subsequent interpretive analysis. During this stage, the researcher must aim to elicit a life story that is not a series of responses to directed questions, but a spontaneous and uninterrupted narrative unaffected by the researcher’s presence (Kaźmierska, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR25\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e, p. 61). Storytelling should emerge from the narrator’s improvisational competence and be free from prior planning or rehearsal. The story should unfold spontaneously, constructed and shared in the ‘here-and-now’. In this phase, the researcher assumes the role of an active and attentive listener, closely following the narrator’s verbal cues.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOnce the narrator signals that the story is complete, the researcher proceeds to the questioning phase, asking for clarification or elaboration on points that were unclear, intriguing, or analytically significant. During this second phase, the researcher draws upon keywords and codes generated during the listening process. These keywords are typically drawn from the narrator’s own phrasing and vocabulary (Rosenthal, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR37\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e, p. 283).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e With the participant’s consent, the entire interview is audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim, preserving all salient features of the speech, including non-standard forms, pauses, stutters, dialectal variation, and other paralinguistic elements. These features are not treated merely as formalities of transcription, but as components of narrative performance that reveal speaker positioning, hesitation, and the emotional labour of storytelling.\u003c/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eAnalytical strategy and interpretation process\u003c/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eA rigorously executed interview procedure enabled the transition to the analytical phase, which comprised two sequential stages (Schütze, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR42\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012a\u003c/span\u003e, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR43\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012b\u003c/span\u003e; Wengraf, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR55\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e). In the first stage, I conducted a step-by-step formal analysis of the transcripts, isolating narrative, descriptive, and argumentative passages from the interviews. On the basis of this initial selection, I organised each participant’s life story by distinguishing between those parts of the text that energise the narrative and actively reconstruct the course of events, and those that express opinions, self-representation, and definitions of the world and self-in-the-world (Kaźmierska \u0026amp; Waniek, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR26\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e; Schütze, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR42\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012a\u003c/span\u003e, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR43\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012b\u003c/span\u003e; Wengraf, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR55\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTypically, this first analytical stage tends to present few difficulties. The chronological structure of the narrative is usually visible in the text, allowing the researcher to reconstruct an objective timeline of biographical events. However, the analysis of the second layer of the text requires more advanced interpretive work focused on linguistic structures. This stage benefits from the collaborative input of a team of researchers, who deliberate over multiple interpretive possibilities.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe analytical process enabled the identification of distinct segments within the narration, including: (1) theoretical commentary, in which the participant expresses generalised attitudes toward life events; (2) background constructions, which are embedded within the main narrative line and serve to embellish or contextualise the core story; (3) fadeouts (German: \u003cem\u003eAusblendung\u003c/em\u003e), referring to the partial or complete omission of information. These appear as sudden gaps or ruptures in narrative continuity, often reflecting the narrator’s attempt to avoid shame or emotionally charged topics; and (4) argumentative commentary, through which the narrator attempts to explain the problems surrounding them to both themselves and the listener. It is in these argumentative passages that narrators most often employ various neutralisation strategies (Kaźmierska, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2014\u003c/span\u003e; Schütze, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR42\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012a\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt this point in the analysis, each textual segment was identified, interpreted, and assigned relevant analytical codes. Each interview was analysed individually. Once all narratives were coded, I moved to the final stage: comparing and consolidating the codes and conducting a thematic analysis within the framework of emergent analytical categories. During this phase, I observed a recurring link between argumentative segments and Sykes and Matza’s (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR27\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1957\u003c/span\u003e) theory of neutralisation techniques. This prompted a reanalysis of the argumentative passages through the lens of criminological theory.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e The majority of argumentative statements appeared within the three leading thematic fields related to the characteristics of the imprisoned family member, other family members, and the behaviuor of the wider environment, such as co-workers, neighbours, and distant relatives. In these parts of the narration, the respondents did not directly report events, but rather characterised the behaviours of other people in the environment or presented their own opinions about them. The respondents used the most neutralisation strategies when characterising an imprisoned son or parent.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Results","content":"\u003cdiv id=\"Sec12\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eDiagnosing neutralisation strategies in argumentative narratives\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe thematic analysis of the interviews revealed two primary patterns in the deployment of neutralisation strategies. First, narrators drew on discrete techniques corresponding to Sykes and Matza\u0026rsquo;s (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR27\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1957\u003c/span\u003e) classic typology\u0026mdash;such as denial of responsibility, denial of injury, and condemnation of the condemners. Second, they employed hybrid strategies, combining elements from multiple techniques within a single narrative segment. These strategies were particularly salient in argumentative sequences\u0026mdash;passages in which narrators offered explanations, justifications, or evaluative commentary on morally sensitive experiences.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eImportantly, the use of neutralisation strategies varied across narrator groups. Parents more frequently employed composite forms, especially those aimed at minimising harm or challenging the credibility of victims. Their narratives often reflected a desire to mitigate the moral weight of their children's actions, positioning themselves as both protective and morally conflicted. In contrast, adult children of prisoners tended to rely on singular techniques, such as denial of responsibility or condemnation of the condemners, often in defence of their imprisoned fathers. These instances reflect attempts to protect a fragile filial bond while negotiating personal and social dissonance. The distribution of neutralisation strategies by narrator group is presented in Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Tab1\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e below.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\u003ctable float=\"Yes\" id=\"Tab1\" border=\"1\"\u003e\u003ccaption language=\"En\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 1\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eSummary of neutralisation strategies by narrator group\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/caption\u003e\u003ccolgroup cols=\"3\"\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c1\" colnum=\"1\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c2\" colnum=\"2\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c3\" colnum=\"3\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cthead\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eNeutralisation strategy\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eUsed by Parents\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eUsed by Adult Children\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/thead\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eDenial of Responsibility\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eOccasionally used to explain lack of control over son\u0026rsquo;s behaviour.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrequently used to distance self from father\u0026rsquo;s crime.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eDenial of Injury\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrequently used to minimise the impact of the offence.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eRarely used.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eDenial of the Victim\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eOccasionally used, often framed as provocation.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eOccasionally used, especially in cases involving conflict.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eCondemnation of the Condemners\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eOccasionally used to criticise the justice system or media.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrequently used to delegitimise social judgment.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eAppeal to Higher Loyalties\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrequently used to justify continued parental support.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eOccasionally used to defend family honour.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eMixed Strategies\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrequently used, blending several techniques.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eRarely used-strategies tend to be more distinct.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/colgroup\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFurther linguistic and functional characteristics of these strategies are summarised in Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Tab2\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e, which highlights how particular discursive resources operate across different narrative contexts.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\u003ctable float=\"Yes\" id=\"Tab2\" border=\"1\"\u003e\u003ccaption language=\"En\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 2\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eOverview of Neutralisation Strategies by Narrator Group\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/caption\u003e\u003ccolgroup cols=\"4\"\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c1\" colnum=\"1\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c2\" colnum=\"2\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c3\" colnum=\"3\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c4\" colnum=\"4\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cthead\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eNeutralisation strategy\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eNarrator group\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eLinguistic features\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eFunction\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/thead\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eDenial of Responsibility\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eAdult children \u0026amp; parents\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eHedging, metaphor, shifting agency (e.g., \u0026ldquo;slave\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;had to\u0026rdquo;)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eExternalizing guilt; preserving family dignity\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eDenial of Injury\u0026thinsp;+\u0026thinsp;Denial of Victim (Mixed)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eParents of incarcerated sons\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eMinimizing language, victim discrediting, vague quantifiers\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eUndermining harm and victimhood; reducing blame\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eCondemnation of the Condemners\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eAdult children (esp. daughters)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eEvaluative contrast, moral inversion, role reversal (e.g., mother vs father)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eReassigning blame; restoring dignity to the incarcerated\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eAppeal to Higher Loyalties\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eAdult children with imprisoned fathers\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eJustificatory framing, references to familial duty, conditional modality (\"so we could\")\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eFraming crime as necessity; affirming relational and moral loyalty\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/colgroup\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe examples below illustrate how such strategies are discursively constructed across diverse narrative contexts. Notably, these constructions are not simply defensive reactions but also function as identity work, wherein narrators navigate complex moral terrain by reinterpreting agency, guilt, and relational roles.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThese patterns point to a broader narrative process in which speakers engage in the active reconstruction of moral selfhood. By drawing on culturally recognisable discursive repertoires \u0026ndash; such as denial, minimisation, or reversal \u0026ndash; they negotiate the tellability of their stories (Georgakopoulou, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR18\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2006\u003c/span\u003e) and claim social legitimacy for stigmatised identities. In this sense, neutralisation strategies serve not only as tools of moral justification but also as narrative positioning devices (Bamberg, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR3\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1997\u003c/span\u003e) through which speakers recalibrate their alignment with dominant moral orders.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec13\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eExample 1. One-sided technique: Denial of Responsibility\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eAmong the most frequently observed discursive strategies was the denial of responsibility, whereby narrators framed the incarcerated relative\u0026rsquo;s actions as compelled by external forces, determined by circumstances, or beyond their control. This technique was commonly employed by both adult children and parents of prisoners, often serving to reframe criminal behavior in a morally neutral or sympathetic light. Below are two examples that illustrate this strategy in practice.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec14\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eDiana (adult daughter of a prisoner)\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;This great friend of my dad [said in an ironic and sarcastic tone], who theoretically gave him a great chance in life and offered him to become the director of the bank, turned out to be his yyyy big BOSS, and my dad became somewhat a slave. As it later turned out, my dad had to give bribes to the man who had simply blackmailed him. At some point, my dad started to be afraid that if he didn\u0026rsquo;t do it, he would have some problems... this man really had a HUGE influence\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e(\u003cem\u003eDiana, 25, daughter of a white-collar offender convicted of bribery and embezzlement; sentenced to two years in prison\u003c/em\u003e)\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDiana frames her father\u0026rsquo;s criminal behavior as the outcome of external coercion and betrayal. Despite acknowledging his powerful position as a bank director, she employs sarcastic intonation (\u0026ldquo;this great friend\u0026rdquo;) and metaphorical reversals (\u0026ldquo;slave,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;BOSS\u0026rdquo;) to depict him as a victim rather than a perpetrator. Modal hedging (\u0026ldquo;somewhat,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;had to\u0026rdquo;) and narrative sequencing (from opportunity to blackmail) construct a morally constrained trajectory. Through these linguistic choices, Diana performs a discursive repositioning of her father-denying his agency and restoring moral dignity through a narrative of entrapment.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec15\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eJoanna (mother of an incarcerated son)\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;Karol\u0026rsquo;s childhood was not problematic. Well, he was a boy\u0026hellip; but overall, he was good and didn\u0026rsquo;t cause any problems that were out of the ordinary. He performed well at school. However, later in life, he fell into bad company. It was this one boy. He moved nearby and had grown up on the streets from a young age. His parents had never cared for him. This boy was outside from morning to night and had to learn how to get by on his own. He taught my son all these things. Fortunately, this \u0026lsquo;friend\u0026rsquo; is also in prison, and justice caught up with him\u0026hellip; I know you can\u0026rsquo;t blame anyone else, but my son was impressionable, and his friends were important role models for him\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e(\u003cem\u003eJoanna, 45, mother of a son convicted of assault and theft; served four years in prison\u003c/em\u003e)\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJoanna constructs a clear moral dichotomy between her son\u0026rsquo;s normative childhood and the deviant trajectory initiated by a peer she identifies as pathological. Her account is structured around a temporal and causal shift: from innocence to corruption, from school success to delinquency \u0026ndash; facilitated by a \u0026ldquo;friend\u0026rdquo; with a damaged background. Although Joanna verbally acknowledges shared responsibility (\u0026ldquo;I know you can\u0026rsquo;t blame anyone else\u0026rdquo;), the dominant affective alignment of her narrative functions to externalise blame.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThrough strategies such as contrastive evaluation, external attribution, and subtle moral distancing, Joanna presents Karol as impressionable and misled \u0026ndash; not intrinsically deviant. The friend is rendered as a contaminating agent, while her son\u0026rsquo;s fall is portrayed as situational rather than dispositional. In doing so, she simultaneously protects her son\u0026rsquo;s moral image and secures her own position as a responsible, caring mother caught in circumstances beyond her control.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTaken together, both accounts reveal how denial of responsibility operates as a narrative resource for maintaining moral coherence within family roles. Rather than direct rebuttals of guilt, these stories enact discursive repositionings that preserve relational bonds, mitigate stigma, and negotiate tellability (Georgakopoulou, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR18\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2006\u003c/span\u003e) in the face of criminal disruption. They illuminate the complex work of identity in narrating deviance \u0026ndash; not through denial of fact, but through the moral reframing of causality and agency.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec16\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eExample 2. Mixed technique: Denial of Injury and Denial of Victim\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis combined strategy appeared exclusively among parents-particularly mothers-whose sons had participated in violent offenses involving multiple individuals. The narrators simultaneously minimized the severity of harm and undermined the legitimacy of the victim, thereby constructing a morally diminished view of the offense and diffusing their child\u0026rsquo;s individual accountability. This convergence of strategies demonstrates a layered form of narrative defence, in which harm is rhetorically diminished and the victim symbolically disqualified.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec17\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eAnna (mother of an incarcerated son)\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;Mark [my son] was in a juvenile detention center and correctional facility but for minor offenses. He stole some scrap from a junkyard and that's how it happened... And\u0026hellip; he also hit a girl with a tiny little stone, but she reported it to the police, and because she had a mental illness, they believed her, and that\u0026rsquo;s how it ended up for my son\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e(\u003cem\u003eAnna, 65, mother of a son convicted of repeated theft and robbery; served multiple prison terms\u003c/em\u003e)\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnna frames her son\u0026rsquo;s offences as trivial and his victims as unreliable. She refers to the stolen materials as \u0026ldquo;scrap,\u0026rdquo; minimising the seriousness of the theft, and characterises the assault as involving \u0026ldquo;a tiny little stone.\u0026rdquo; Additionally, she undermines the credibility of the female victim by emphasizing her mental illness and implying false accusation. These rhetorical strategies operate as a joint denial of injury and denial of victim, reducing the perceived harm while casting doubt on the victim\u0026rsquo;s moral and psychological authority.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe use of diminutives (\u0026ldquo;tiny little stone\u0026rdquo;), vague terminology (\u0026ldquo;some scrap\u0026rdquo;), and implicit disqualification of the victim (\u0026ldquo;they believed her\u0026rdquo;) reflects a narrative strategy aimed at moral realignment. Anna does not explicitly deny her son\u0026rsquo;s actions, but frames them as misunderstood, exaggerated, or undeserving of punishment. This reveals a narrative positioning in which the speaker seeks to protect kinship ties by reconfiguring the meaning and seriousness of deviance. Through this framing, her son\u0026rsquo;s identity is reinterpreted from deviant actor to misunderstood youth.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec18\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eJulia (mother of an incarcerated son)\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;So, there was a fight because my son\u0026rsquo;s friends went to the store, and there were other men there, foreigners, or something. I don\u0026rsquo;t know for sure because I wasn\u0026rsquo;t there, but that\u0026rsquo;s what I heard, and that\u0026rsquo;s how I see it. Those other men by the store were probably Ukrainians, and there were more of them... so I don\u0026rsquo;t know how it\u0026rsquo;s possible that they got beaten. A fight broke out. One of those Ukrainians got seriously messed up, his head was busted, and his eyes were damaged. But my son was in the store at that time, and during all the commotion, he came out because he was worried that his friends were taking too long. Then someone calls the cops... From what my son said... he just kicked once\u0026hellip; but the cops arrived just then and arrested everyone. His friends had lawyers and luck, so they got out of jail. One of them went abroad. My son took the blame for everything. [...] The politicians want us to be nice to foreigners. But it looked like only one side was blamed. In our country, the \u0026lsquo;others\u0026rsquo; can burn and stomp around, but we\u0026rsquo;re supposed to be nice and polite\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e(\u003cem\u003eJulia, 60, mother of a son convicted of assault and theft; served four years in prison\u003c/em\u003e)\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJulia explicitly states that she was not an eyewitness, yet proceeds to narrate the events in detail. Her account is marked by uncertainty (\u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t know for sure\u0026rdquo;), distancing (\u0026ldquo;from what my son said\u0026rdquo;), and epistemic mitigation. At the same time, she reconstructs her son\u0026rsquo;s role as peripheral-present but uninvolved, and ultimately self-sacrificing. His single act (\u0026ldquo;he just kicked once\u0026rdquo;) is positioned against the exaggerated outcome (\u0026ldquo;seriously messed up\u0026rdquo;), thus dissociating him from the consequences.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJulia\u0026rsquo;s discourse blends denial of injury (by minimizing the harm caused by her son) with denial of victim (by questioning the legitimacy of the injured party, emphasizing their foreign status).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHer narrative also includes ideological justifications rooted in nationalist rhetoric (\u0026ldquo;we\u0026rsquo;re supposed to be nice to foreigners\u0026rdquo;), which reframe the incident as a larger sociopolitical injustice. The victim\u0026rsquo;s otherness becomes a symbolic resource for constructing grievance and injustice, shifting focus away from the act itself. Through this lens, her son becomes not a perpetrator but a scapegoat \u0026ndash; unfairly criminalized within a biased system. This construction reveals how narrative identity work often extends beyond the personal into collective scripts of injustice, normativity, and belonging.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec19\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eExample 3. One-sided technique: Condemnation of the Condemner\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis strategy was observed exclusively among adult daughters of incarcerated fathers. Although the fathers had committed serious offenses that destabilized the family structure, these narrators redirected blame toward non-imprisoned mothers, portraying them as morally deficient. Through this discursive inversion, maternal figures were condemned for perceived weakness, disloyalty, or self-interest \u0026ndash; particularly when they distanced themselves from the imprisoned father.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec20\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eMonika (daughter of an imprisoned father)\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;There was a moment when she [my mother] decided that she probably couldn\u0026rsquo;t handle dad\u0026rsquo;s imprisonment anymore, and that she wanted to divorce him. I don\u0026rsquo;t know how I reacted. I will never forgive her for filing for a divorce when dad was in prison! I believe we should have supported him instead of doing that. She stabbed him in the back... It was tough. Because I couldn\u0026rsquo;t understand why. Doesn\u0026rsquo;t mom love dad?! What will he do when he gets out?\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e(\u003cem\u003eMonika, 25, daughter of a father convicted of drug trafficking; served five years in prison\u003c/em\u003e)\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMonika\u0026rsquo;s narrative shifts the evaluative focus away from her father\u0026rsquo;s criminal actions and onto her mother\u0026rsquo;s emotional response to them. Despite implicitly acknowledging the hardship of incarceration, she recasts her mother\u0026rsquo;s decision to divorce as a profound moral failure\u0026mdash;\u0026ldquo;a stab in the back.\u0026rdquo; This phrasing evokes betrayal and treason, while rhetorical questions such as \u0026ldquo;Doesn\u0026rsquo;t mom love dad?!\u0026rdquo; position the daughter as a loyal moral witness and the mother as emotionally deficient.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHer account minimizes the father\u0026rsquo;s culpability by reframing the central moral rupture as the mother\u0026rsquo;s withdrawal of support. The incarcerated father is discursively repositioned as a suffering figure, deserving care and allegiance, rather than blame. The mother, in turn, becomes the agent of harm, not through action, but through emotional withdrawal.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis form of condemnation-of-the-condemner shows how narrators reassign blame within the family to protect bonds with the imprisoned parent, portraying others\u0026rsquo; actions as morally questionable. Crucially, it also shapes narrative identity through loyalty: Monika constructs herself by siding with the stigmatized parent and defending a threatened familial bond. Such storytelling reveals how narrative positioning (Bamberg, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR3\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1997\u003c/span\u003e; De Fina \u0026amp; Georgakopoulou, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR14\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e) operates not only on the level of character construction but also within larger dynamics of kinship, solidarity, and identity repair.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec21\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eExample 4. One-sided technique: Appeal to Higher Loyalties\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis strategy emerged among adult children of prisoners who themselves had experienced parental incarceration during early childhood. Often lacking detailed or coherent memories of their imprisoned fathers, these narrators reconstructed their fathers\u0026rsquo; criminal actions through justificatory framings that emphasized necessity, care, and family survival. Offenses were not denied, but instead reinterpreted as morally motivated acts committed in response to systemic hardship.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec22\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eRobert (son of an incarcerated father)\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;My dad did it because I was little, my sister was little, my brother was tiny. And he just did it because it was hard for him with money, and he did it so we could have things. Not for alcohol or anything like that, just so we wouldn't be without at home\u0026hellip; Because Mom didn\u0026rsquo;t work\u0026hellip; Because she was sick, she still is\u0026hellip; So she didn\u0026rsquo;t work and Dad tried to provide us with everything so we wouldn\u0026rsquo;t miss anything\u0026hellip; But he couldn\u0026rsquo;t make it work either\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e(\u003cem\u003eRobert, 35, son of a repeat offender convicted of multiple thefts; served several prison sentences\u003c/em\u003e)\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRobert's narrative explicitly acknowledges his father\u0026rsquo;s criminal behavior, yet reframes it as an act of paternal responsibility. Through repeated justifications-\u0026ldquo;so we could have things,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;not for alcohol\u0026rdquo;-he linguistically constructs a morally positive motive behind the offenses. His use of repetition, accumulative detail (\u0026ldquo;my sister was little, my brother was tiny\u0026rdquo;), and affective alignment (\u0026ldquo;Dad tried to provide us with everything\u0026rdquo;) function to reposition the father not as deviant, but as devoted.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis narrative illustrates an appeal to higher loyalties strategy, in which criminal acts are legitimized through reference to family protection and economic survival. Robert\u0026rsquo;s stance emphasises familial obligation and care as overriding the illegality of the acts. In doing so, he restores moral coherence to the father\u0026rsquo;s identity and mitigates stigma by anchoring the offence within a framework of necessity and love.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRobert presents his father\u0026rsquo;s crimes not as moral transgressions but as expressions of paternal responsibility. This strategy allows him to maintain emotional and moral coherence with the stigmatized parent while sustaining a coherent narrative about himself. The appeal to higher loyalties \u0026ndash; caring for the family, a childhood marked by poverty, the mother\u0026rsquo;s illness \u0026ndash; serves to neutralise stigma and imbue his biography with meaning in the context of familial trauma.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"Discussion","content":"\u003cp\u003eThe findings of this study demonstrate how family members of incarcerated individuals employ nuanced narrative strategies to manage stigma, moral ambiguity, and identity disruption. Using autobiographical narrative interviews, the analysis traced how speakers linguistically reframe the criminal actions of a loved one-often through justification, mitigation, or displacement of blame. These strategies were not random but structured responses to the social pressures of being morally implicated in someone else's criminality. In this sense, they functioned as discursive tools for restoring dignity, preserving relational bonds, and sustaining a coherent self-image in the face of public discreditation.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA key insight that emerged is the relational embeddedness of linguistic strategy. Different narrator groups mobilised different techniques, reflecting their social roles and affective alignments. Parents of incarcerated sons often combined multiple techniques-particularly denial of injury and victim discrediting \u0026ndash; suggesting a complex attempt to rationalise their child\u0026rsquo;s actions while still fulfilling a parental role. In contrast, adult children of prisoners frequently employed one-sided strategies such as condemnation of the condemners or appeals to higher loyalties, particularly when speaking about imprisoned fathers. This differentiation reflects the intergenerational complexity of narrative positioning: children strive not only to understand parental deviance, but to integrate it into a coherent identity without rupturing core attachments.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eImportantly, these findings also reinforce the value of analysing argumentative narrative segments-moments in the interview where speakers break the flow of storytelling to explain, defend, or emotionally react. These segments offer particularly fertile ground for identifying stance-taking, discursive alignment, and moral recalibration. Rather than being digressions or asides, they are central to the narrator\u0026rsquo;s ethical labour, revealing not only how the past is recounted but how it is morally rehabilitated through language.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMoreover, the use of neutralisation techniques aligns closely with Goffman\u0026rsquo;s (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1963\u003c/span\u003e) theorisation of stigma management. Participants, though not offenders themselves, occupy what might be called a \u0026ldquo;shadowed subject position\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; socially marked by association and thus compelled to explain themselves. Their narratives become a form of discursive boundary work (Wetherell \u0026amp; Potter, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR56\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1992\u003c/span\u003e), where alignment, distance, and ambiguity must be continuously negotiated. As such, the findings underscore how moral reasoning is not simply cognitive or ethical but deeply linguistic-performed through narrative structure, lexical choice, and interactional framing.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eImportantly, these narrative choices were shaped not only by social roles but also by the limits of tellability (Georgakopoulou, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR18\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2006\u003c/span\u003e) \u0026ndash; what could be said, to whom, and in what way, given the threat of moral judgment. Speakers navigated the blurred lines between what was socially reportable and what remained unsayable, adapting their stories to remain intelligible and acceptable in the eyes of the imagined listener.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis research contributes to sociolinguistic scholarship by demonstrating how speakers use language to negotiate socially discrediting identities, and how narrative becomes a key site for the management of stigma in contexts of marginality.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBy foregrounding linguistic strategies within autobiographical storytelling, the study offers a nuanced account of how discourse reflects and reshapes the moral positioning of speakers embedded in criminogenic environments. Families of prisoners, especially the parents of incarcerated individuals, are burdened with an unwarranted sense of shame. The social environment perceives parents as being responsible for committing crimes (Jackson \u0026amp; Mannix, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR23\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2004\u003c/span\u003e; Szczepanik, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR48\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e). Szczepanik (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR48\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e, p. 85) drew attention to the problem of fulfilling parental roles in an unhealthy \u0026lsquo;conspiracy and secrecy\u0026rsquo;. Mainly mothers of prisoners who experience shame and fear of stigmatisation and rejection are afraid of publicly and openly supporting their imprisoned, demoralized children. In this situation, they explain their and their children's behaviour; moreover, they offer help implicitly, shaping a \u0026lsquo;public identity\u0026rsquo; that conflicts with their authentic emotions and needs.\u003cdiv class=\"BlockQuote\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eI have always held the opinion that if your kid does that to you, kick him out. Now I understand parents who feel this pain but still help their children. I will always help him. He is my son (Benisty et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR5\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis approach aligns with recent sociolinguistic work that emphasizes language\u0026rsquo;s role in constructing, resisting, and reworking subject positions under conditions of social constraint (e.g., Blommaert, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR8\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2005\u003c/span\u003e; Heller, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR22\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2003\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFinally, this discussion affirms the importance of analysing not only what is told but how and why it becomes tellable in the first place. The emotional, moral, and social risks associated with narrating crime-adjacent experiences require speakers to construct narratives that are not only internally coherent but socially receivable. This study highlights how the limits of tellability shape the very architecture of narrative identity in stigmatized contexts.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Conclusion","content":"\u003cp\u003eBased on biographical narrative analysis, this study identified the various linguistic strategies employed by narrators during interviews. The focus was on autobiographical accounts provided by family members of incarcerated individuals-relatives who were not themselves perpetrators, yet remained strongly bound to the imprisoned father or son. The analysis demonstrates how empirical material can be interpreted through the biographical-narrative methods of Fritz Sch\u0026uuml;tze (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR42\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012a\u003c/span\u003e) and Tom Wengraf (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR55\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e). The step-by-step illustration of data collection, coding, and interpretation, anchored in a specific research problem, offers a valuable methodological contribution for qualitative scholars working in similarly sensitive terrains. In particular, it may guide those aiming to explore the lived experiences of marginalised individuals who grapple with painful or stigmatised life circumstances.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn line with Gabriele Rosenthal\u0026rsquo;s (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR37\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e, p. 279\u0026ndash;281) assertion, this study affirms that a comprehensive and holistic understanding of (auto)biographical narratives\u0026mdash;viewed across the entire life course \u0026ndash; grants researchers deeper access to the interplay of personal events, social structures, and long-term consequences. Compared to isolated interview responses, macro-level narrative biographies enable insight into how participants make sense of their life trajectories and how they locate themselves within broader social worlds (Strauss, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR47\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1978\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt the same time, this does not diminish the value of small stories or micro-level narrative fragments. As De Fina and Georgakopoulou (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR14\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e) argue, micro and macro narratives are not mutually exclusive but dynamically interrelated. A single narrative episode can function as both a micro-story with local, interactional relevance and as a window into broader identity work or social meaning-making. While macro-biographical narration lends itself to exploring ruptures, suffering trajectories (Riemann \u0026amp; Sch\u0026uuml;tze, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR35\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e), and long-term structural effects, small stories are equally valuable for tracing performative positioning, affective alignments, and discursive negotiations as they unfold.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis dual focus enriches narrative inquiry by allowing researchers to move fluidly between the interactional and the structural, between momentary positioning and biographical coherence. Especially in contexts of marginalisation, this layered approach helps identify absences, silences, and narrative breaks \u0026ndash; providing indirect access to unspoken pain and ambiguity. Crucially, such a methodology also amplifies the voices of people and communities often excluded from dominant historical and social narratives (Cockcroft, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR12\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2005\u003c/span\u003e; Rosenthal, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR37\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFamily members of prisoners, I argue, constitute precisely such a neglected group.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe findings of this study confirm prior claims that the families of prisoners live under a burden of shame, trauma, and invisibility (Benisty et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR5\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e; Gueta, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR20\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e; McCarthy \u0026amp; Adams, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR29\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e). Both adult children of prisoners and parents of incarcerated sons were found to employ a repertoire of argumentative strategies that helped them maintain a socially acceptable self-image and preserve a morally coherent representation of the imprisoned relative. The use of neutralisation techniques within their narratives reveals attempts to reduce emotional dissonance and reinterpret past events in ways that allow for personal dignity and relational continuity. Often, these family members do not fully accept the legal guilt of their loved ones. Instead, they engage in discursive labour to reframe criminality through mitigating explanations or moral justifications. Importantly, this suffering is rarely articulated directly. These findings align with Arditti\u0026rsquo;s (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR1\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2003\u003c/span\u003e) observations that the distress experienced by prisoners\u0026rsquo; families is frequently privatised and hidden. Moreover, the way that imprisoned relatives are perceived and morally evaluated shapes the nature and depth of support that family members are willing or able to offer (Benisty, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR4\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e; Szczepanik, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR48\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFinally, it must be acknowledged that conducting research in such morally sensitive spaces raises critical questions about epistemic position and ethical responsibility. The asymmetry between researcher and researched is amplified in criminogenic environments, where participants carry what Goffman (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1963\u003c/span\u003e) termed a \u0026lsquo;discrediting burden\u0026rsquo;. These individuals are often positioned at the bottom of the social hierarchy, viewed through lenses of deviance and suspicion. This form of marginality renders them both socially excluded and ethically complex as research participants. In this regard, criminogenic environments pose methodological and ethical challenges not unlike those encountered in elite research settings (Desmond, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR15\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2004\u003c/span\u003e; Harvey, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR21\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e; Ruan, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR39\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e). Both are characterised by restricted access, asymmetrical power dynamics, and a heightened need for reflexivity. In navigating such settings, researchers must invest significant effort into preparation, trust-building, and the ongoing negotiation of ethical practice-ensuring that participants\u0026rsquo; vulnerability is met with care, sensitivity, and accountability.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt the same time, this study contributes to sociolinguistic theory by showing how narrative positioning and moral reasoning intersect in stigmatised contexts-revealing how language functions as a site of identity repair and social negotiation.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Declarations","content":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ch2\u003eCompeting Interests\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe author declares that there are no competing financial or non-financial interests.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003ch2\u003eAuthor Contribution\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eM.C. is the sole author of this article and was responsible for the study conception and design, data collection, analysis, and manuscript preparation.\u003c/p\u003e\u003ch2\u003eAcknowledgement\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis research was supported by the National Science Centre, Poland (Grant No. 2017/27/N/HS6/00501).\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"References","content":"\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eArditti, J. 2003. 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Columbia University.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003e"}],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":true,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":false,"hideJournal":true,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":false,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":false,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true},"keywords":"Narrative identity, Stigma management, Neutralisation techniques, Narrative sociology, Autobiographical narrative interviews (BNIM)","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7780820/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7780820/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"\u003cp\u003eGrounded in narrative identity theory and biographical approaches to discourse, this study explores how family members of incarcerated men use autobiographical narration to manage stigma and construct morally coherent selves. Drawing on the Biographical-Narrative Interpretive Method (BNIM) and Sykes and Matza\u0026rsquo;s theory of neutralisation techniques, the analysis focuses on how narrators linguistically reframe their relatives\u0026rsquo; criminal actions through justification, mitigation, and blame displacement. Based on interviews with adult children and parents of prisoners, the study identifies discursive strategies employed in argumentative narrative segments, where speakers position themselves in relation to moral responsibility and public discreditation. These stories function as tools of boundary work and identity repair, enabling narrators to preserve dignity and sustain relational bonds. By showing how narrative becomes a resource for navigating morally compromised subject positions, the article contributes to sociolinguistic and narrative inquiry into stigma, identity negotiation, and the micro-politics of storytelling in structurally marginalised contexts.\u003c/p\u003e","manuscriptTitle":"“It Wasn’t His Fault”: Narrative Strategies of Stigma Management in Families of Incarcerated Men","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2025-11-13 04:15:50","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7780820/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"77bbb337-6319-4e30-9b69-4538368e4830","owner":[],"postedDate":"November 13th, 2025","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"posted","subjectAreas":[],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2025-11-13T04:15:50+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2025-11-13 04:15:50","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-7780820","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-7780820","identity":"rs-7780820","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"8U1c8b4HqxoKbykW_rLl7","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}