The leading questions from which the present study originates could be summarised as follows: How do lawyers use questions to influence witness’ narratives? Are Public Inquiries totally inquisitorial from a linguistic point of view? The first question is bound to the methods to be selected for the analysis, while the second to the peculiarity of the data chosen. Indeed, the majority of the studies on courtroom discourse focuses on trial as a legal genre and research on the Public Inquiry is very limited. Moreover, even in the few contributions available, none considers this proceeding in a genre perspective. The present study starts from the macro-context of the speech event analysed and proceeds to an in-depth study of its linguistic constituents. The analysis will set up a discourse and genre framework to define at first the discursive and generic structure of the Public Inquiry; the scope of the observation will then be restricted to the role of reformulations that are central in the construction of lawyers’ questions. The macro-analysis will begin with the legal framework of the Public Inquiry in order to highlight its position and function in the Common Law legal system. This general overview on the proceeding from a legal point of view will be the basic background to understand the discursive dynamics of the Public Inquiry and in particular of the witness examination as a genre. Specifically, we will consider the different stages of this communicative event analysing their linguistic structure. Moreover, in order to demonstrate the peculiarities of the Public Inquiry, we will also observe differences and similarities with trials, which have been thoroughly described by the previous literature on legal discourses. Finally the analysis will move to the micro-analysis of the genre selected and will concentrate on reformulations as linguistic means exploited by lawyers in order to put effective requests to the witness. To achieve this purpose, the study combines a text perspective (qualitative description, especially for reformulations) and a corpus perspective. On the one hand, manual analysis will identify the reiterated patterns in the use of reformulations. On the other hand, the computerised aid provided by corpus linguistics will integrate the manual analysis, providing the frequency and recursivity of the metadiscursive items associated. The general approach adopted will thus be corpus-driven and the theoretical statements made by the present work will derive from the presence and observation of corpus evidence. Consequently, all the theoretical statements will directly reflect the evidence offered by the corpus. The textual and the computerized perspectives will be fused together in order to gain a complete overview of the linguistic strategies used by the legal professionals during the witness examination. The issues raised and the methodological framework described in this section will be further clarified in section 1.3. where we will discuss the structural organization of the work. In the next section 1.2., we will explain where our research questions originate and why we decided to choose the Public Inquiry witness examinations as data for our analysis.
Courtroom discourse in the witness examination. the case of the public inquiry / Cavalieri, S. - STAMPA. - (2013).
Courtroom discourse in the witness examination. the case of the public inquiry
CAVALIERI S
2013
Abstract
The leading questions from which the present study originates could be summarised as follows: How do lawyers use questions to influence witness’ narratives? Are Public Inquiries totally inquisitorial from a linguistic point of view? The first question is bound to the methods to be selected for the analysis, while the second to the peculiarity of the data chosen. Indeed, the majority of the studies on courtroom discourse focuses on trial as a legal genre and research on the Public Inquiry is very limited. Moreover, even in the few contributions available, none considers this proceeding in a genre perspective. The present study starts from the macro-context of the speech event analysed and proceeds to an in-depth study of its linguistic constituents. The analysis will set up a discourse and genre framework to define at first the discursive and generic structure of the Public Inquiry; the scope of the observation will then be restricted to the role of reformulations that are central in the construction of lawyers’ questions. The macro-analysis will begin with the legal framework of the Public Inquiry in order to highlight its position and function in the Common Law legal system. This general overview on the proceeding from a legal point of view will be the basic background to understand the discursive dynamics of the Public Inquiry and in particular of the witness examination as a genre. Specifically, we will consider the different stages of this communicative event analysing their linguistic structure. Moreover, in order to demonstrate the peculiarities of the Public Inquiry, we will also observe differences and similarities with trials, which have been thoroughly described by the previous literature on legal discourses. Finally the analysis will move to the micro-analysis of the genre selected and will concentrate on reformulations as linguistic means exploited by lawyers in order to put effective requests to the witness. To achieve this purpose, the study combines a text perspective (qualitative description, especially for reformulations) and a corpus perspective. On the one hand, manual analysis will identify the reiterated patterns in the use of reformulations. On the other hand, the computerised aid provided by corpus linguistics will integrate the manual analysis, providing the frequency and recursivity of the metadiscursive items associated. The general approach adopted will thus be corpus-driven and the theoretical statements made by the present work will derive from the presence and observation of corpus evidence. Consequently, all the theoretical statements will directly reflect the evidence offered by the corpus. The textual and the computerized perspectives will be fused together in order to gain a complete overview of the linguistic strategies used by the legal professionals during the witness examination. The issues raised and the methodological framework described in this section will be further clarified in section 1.3. where we will discuss the structural organization of the work. In the next section 1.2., we will explain where our research questions originate and why we decided to choose the Public Inquiry witness examinations as data for our analysis.File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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