Language, Individual & Society, Volume 10, 2016

Abstract: The present study deals with the use of expressions from the professional therapeutic jargon by criminals in prison and in rehabilitation and the connection of their language to the worldviews of the speakers in each group. Phenomenological interview was used, interviewers encouraging talk about the topics on which the study focuses but refraining from directing interviewees. Ten prisoners and ten former prisoners in rehabilitation were interviewed. Findings indicate that the discourse of both groups contains expressions from the professional therapeutic jargon; rehabilitees chose to use more professional-therapeutic expressions than prisoners, however the meanings they attribute to these expressions is different and attests to a difference between the groups in the components of their worldview. The prisoners' group use of expressions indicates that they did not internalize nor do they identify with the meaning of theses expressions, whereas in the rehabilitees' group, the use of these expressions creates change in components of their worldview attesting to their leaning towards normative society and seeing it as a possible future avenue.