Craftism by George Julian for #JusticeforLB
Last year, as a humble final year linguistics undergraduate, I wrote a 12,000-word dissertation on the apologies of Southern Health regarding the death of Connor Sparrowhawk. Connor was my cousin, and before he died I used to read his mum Sara’s blog as a way of ignoring university deadlines. She called him Laughing Boy, LB for short. On the 4th of July 2013, I saw the blog post that started with “LB died this morning.”, and that’s when Southern Health became a massive, unwanted part of my life.
To summarise my dissertation very briefly, I found that Southern Health used language in an interesting way. The effect was a succession of non-apologies, blame pinned on staff for failings, and positive actions attributed to Southern Health.
