Practicing convict criminology: lessons learned from British academic activism

Joanne Belknap’s recent ASC presidential address included a critique of Convict Criminology’s activism. A number of concerns were provided, although of particular importance here are, first, Belknap’s concerns regarding the absence of ‘marginalized voices’ in the Convict Criminology network. Second, the issue of defining how non-con academics function as Convict Criminology group members. This paper responds to these criticisms. Specifically, we discuss the question of ‘representation’ in BCC and our attempts to remedy this issue. We also draw attention to the academic activism that British Convict Criminology is conducting in Europe. This includes a detailed discussion of the collaborative research-activist activities that involve non-con as well as ex-con academic network members. We demonstrate how these collaborations explain the vital group membership role that non-con academics assume in the activism of Convict Criminology.

Technical Vocabulary and Medieval Text Types: A Semantic Field Approach

This paper seeks to discover in what sense we can classify vocabulary items as technical terms in the later medieval period. In order to arrive at a principled categorization of technicality, distribution is taken as a diagnostic factor: vocabulary shared across the widest range of text types may be assumed to be both prototypical for the semantic field, but also the most general and therefore least technical terms since lexical items derive at least part of their meaning from context, a wider range of contexts implying a wider range of senses. A further way of addressing the question of technicality is tested through the classification of the lexis into semantic hierarchies: in the terms of componential analysis, having more components of meaning puts a term lower in the semantic hierarchy and flags it as having a greater specificity of sense, and thus as more technical. The various text types are interrogated through comparison of the number of levels in their hierarchies and number of lexical items at each level within the hierarchies. Focusing on the vocabulary of a single semantic field, DRESS AND TEXTILES, this paper investigates how four medieval text types (wills, sumptuary laws, petitions, and romances) employ technical terminology in the establishment of the conventions of their genres.