Journal of new advances in English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics

Journal of new advances in English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics

Discoursal Features of Court Speech in Trial Sessions from a Forensic Linguistic Perspective

Document Type : Original Article

Author
Shima Sayahi
Department of English, Arv. C, Islamic Azad University, Abadan, Iran
10.22034/Jeltal.2023.5.2.10
Abstract
This research investigated verbal specialties in the text interpretation of the forensic discourses of the judges and defendants for verification or disapproval of allegations against suspects. The methodology of the current research is qualitative since the frequency of weak and strong styles of speech was counted in the five court sessions. McMenamin’s (2002) Verbal Style Model was followed to investigate weak and strong verbal styles of judges and defendants in the court's trial sessions. Five visual files of several trial sessions in the Judicial Courts of the Islamic Republic of Iran were analyzed. Descriptive statistics revealed that strong and weak verbal styles were used differently. The total frequency of strong style markers was 247, while the frequency of weak style markers was 224. The most frequent discoursal weak style elements are anaphoric expressions, repetition, intensifiers, and ungrammatical sentences. In contrast, judges used more linguistic intensity and lexical variety of standard language, which were not observed in the defendants’ speech. Implications suggest employing linguistic elements like situational context, including genres, style, verbal act, nonverbal communicative competence, and topic, can affect trial processes. Thus, the weak and strong styles of speech should be used with care by both judges and defendants.
Keywords
Forensic linguistics
Verbal style
Social interaction
Discoursal features
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Journal of new advances in English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics
Volume 5, Issue 2 - Serial Number 2
September 2023
Pages 1425-1437

  • Receive Date 09 December 2022
  • Revise Date 10 May 2023
  • Accept Date 14 July 2023