Deadly Performance: A Discursive-Linguistic Analysis of Dave Grossman’s “Killology” as Ideological Text within Cultural Context of Police Use of Force

Deadly Performance: A Discursive-Linguistic Analysis of Dave Grossman’s “Killology” as Ideological Text within Cultural Context of Police Use of Force

Seth Allard

This paper examines the activities of popular speaker and writer Dave Grossman, specifically, responses to Grossman’s “sheepdog” analogy and “field of killology” within the cultural and ideological contexts of police use of deadly force. The author explores discourse-linguistic analysis of a recorded seminar (“Bulletproof Mind Training”) and key samples of Grossman’s written works. Grossman’s conclusions and theories are approached as performance of ideological discourses or texts that are embedded, produced, and reflected within the cultural context of police use of deadly force. The communicative and performative nature of police use of deadly force training and dissemination of knowledge represents a critical entry point for highlighting the confluence of language, symbolism, and police use of deadly force practices. The value of linguistic-discursive research as a valuable component of collaborative, applied anthropological research designed to prevent misuses of deadly force, and implications for sociocultural analysis of pseudoscience as a form of discourse within deadly use of force and violence-related training, policy, and practice are discussed.