Monday, January 14, 2013

Learning the Language



Any second of television time I can get is spent watching shows full of criminals, cops, and investigators. One of my favorite is a show called NCIS. NCIS stands for Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Each episode deals with agents of a particular unit who work together to find forensic evidence to convict felons. This is would my ideal job. The characters in the show work in many different areas such as a crime lab,  on the scene, or dealing with victims. Each of these areas in the job use different linguistics.
Popular Culture uses different linguistics to represent this job. Writers of NCIS had to research the terminology of a Crime Scene Investigator in order to portray the job in a realistic manner. Some of these words include: victim, autopsy, severed, dermis, prints, suicide, murder, post mortem, and suspect. These words are not very common in other careers. The writers of the show want the viewer to be able to relate to the specific field and separate this field from others. By using their own language the writers create this atmosphere of a difficult but interesting life investigators must go through. Writers do this every day in order to draw in an audience.  Even from watching this show I have felt more prepared going into my Criminology classes.  

2 comments:

  1. I used to watch NCIS all the time, it is a great show. That's really cool and impressive that you want to become a Crime Scene Investigator. I love those shows and that would be a sweet job to have but I don't have the stomach to handle those scenes. I hardly look at them when i watch the show, so in real life would just be rough.

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  2. I also love watching crime shows. I find it very entertaining trying to solve the cases in the show, but I don't really see myself in that type of career. Have you thought about what type of crimes scene investigating you'd like to do? Do want to work at the federal level like in NCIS or at the state level like in other crime shows?

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