Analyzing Language and Emotion

Abstract

While I was preparing the manuscript for this book in November 2006, a youth in Germany shot and wounded several of his fellow students, a teacher and the caretaker at his former school, before killing himself. Coincidentally, just days earlier I had finished a novel by the American writer Lionel Shriver about a similar scenario at an American high-school, which includes the following speech by the shooter (Kevin), addressed to his father:

‘I don’t care how your camera works.’ he continued levelly. ‘I don’t want to be a location scout for a bunch of crappy products. I’m not interested. I’m not interested in baseball or the founding fathers or decisive battles of the Civil War. I hate museums and national monuments and picnics. I don’t want to memorize the Declaration of Independence in my spare time or read de Tocqueville. I can’t stand reruns of Tora, Tora, Tora! or documentaries about Dwight Eisenhower. I don’t want to play Trisbee in the backyard or one more game of Monopoly with a snivelling, candy-ass, one-eyed midget. I don’t give a fuck about stamp collecting or rare coins or pressing colorful autumn leaves in encyclopedias. And I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with heart-to-heart father-son talks about aspects of my life that are none of your business.’ (Shriver 2006: 425–6, italics in original).