ABSTRACT
The language in which suicide and other varieties of suicidal self harm are discussed is very sparse. In most ‘suicide talk’, whether among professional or lay people, the whole range of self harmings that can lead to death are subsumed under the umbrella concept ‘suicide’ and a few variants, along with expressions like ‘cry for help’. This is a reflection of a rather limited model of suicidal self harm in which fine distinctions are not made, even in theory, perhaps because they are difficult to make in practice.
