Enhancing the tellability of death-row exoneree narratives: Exploring the role of rhetoric

Abstract

Individuals make sense of experience through telling stories they hope others will hear. To establish an interpretive connection with their audience, narrators must tell stories that are tellable, conceptualized as engaging but not too socially or emotionally challenging. We analyze the narratives of death-sentenced exoneree activists. When depicting their wrongful convictions, we find exoneree activists convey accepted critiques of criminal justice system processing through familiar tropes that reinforce shared understanding with their audience. When representing their unique suffering and conveying a more critical perspective, exonerees marshal sarcasm, metaphor, and litotes. These rhetorical devices convey irony that encourages listeners to question their assumptions, thereby, enhancing audience receptivity to exonerees’ perspectives. We consider the broader significance of figurative language in narrative representations of justice-system involvement.