Exploring the possibility of using appraisal theory to determine the legitimacy of suicide notes

Suicide as a mental state has fascinated psychologists and psychiatrists for many years. Although there are different theories surrounding the suicidal state of mind, some believe that a suicide note could provide insights when determining whether the suicide was genuine or staged. Linguistic analyses since the 1950s on both fabricated and authentic suicide notes have shown that, to some extent, it is possible to determine the characteristics of suicide notes. The current study is influenced by previous linguistic research on suicide notes but approaches the analysis from a slightly different perspective. The argument is that using appraisal theory categories as the main method of analysing both authentic and fabricated suicide notes provides another way of distinguishing between these two sets of notes. Two corpora of suicide notes are analysed. The first corpus represents authentic suicide notes and consists of 33 suicide notes. The second corpus consists of 66 fabricated suicide notes. The analysis indicates that even with limited corpora there is a possibility of using appraisal theory to distinguish between authentic and fabricated suicide notes. Since only small corpora are used in this study, drawing definite conclusions are not possible. Nonetheless, it appears that appraisal theory has potential.