Reconstructing female emotionality

I examine the use of emotion discourse in the management of blame and accountability, using as an empirical case, the Panorama interview between Princess Diana and Martin Bashir. Diana’s talk is examined to determine how she uses notions of emotionality attributed to her in her discourse for accounting purposes. I argue that Diana provides the background for her ‘emotional’ label and through doing so, allocates blame by accusing the media and royal family of fabricating that label for her. She further constructs their motive as being due to their being threatened by her strength of character, rather than her perceived instability. Finally Diana reconstructs her emotional nature into a positive attribute whilst marking the royal family as ‘unemotional’ and uncaring. This study is linked to a broader discursive psychology of emotion concepts and their use