Abstract
The article is devoted to the study of language tools of hedging in the legal discourse, which allows for a better understanding of the language use in a particular social institution. The purpose of the article is to explore the language of a courtroom procedure so as to identify certain linguistic means aimed at preventing speech conflict and maintaining harmonious communication. The authors analyze and describe the basic means of hedging that professional and non-professional interlocutors use in the courtroom discourse to minimize the force of statements which convey uncertainty, indicate communicative support or interest, – and ultimately to facilitate communicative goals of the speakers. Special attention is given to such language tools of hedging, as modal verbs, modal adverbs, discourse markers, all of which play a crucial role in preserving the “face” of speakers as well as harmony in conversation and social interaction. The authors have established that the typical language tools of a harmonious dialogue in the courtroom discourse are modal verbs and discourse markers indicating the strategies of indetermination and subjectivisation. In the legal discourse, language tools of hedging reduce the degree of imposition, disagreement and contradictions, – a feature indicative of the speakers’ interest in the positive outcome, of their competence in the field of rhetoric while engaged in the process of professional interaction.
Keywords: Harmonious dialoguejudicial discoursehedgingmitigation
Introduction
A growing interest in exploring different types of institutional discourse in modern linguistics broadens the knowledge of how the language is used within individual social institutions, especially when certain social roles of the participants in the communication process are taken into account.
Legal discourse is defined by scientists as a kind of institutional type of communication, as a status-oriented interaction of its participants, which dynamically occurs in certain social, cultural and situational contexts, and depends on the system of role prescriptions and standards of conduct in institutional communication settings defined by law (Cheng & Danesi, 2019; Krapivkina, 2016; Palashevskaya, 2010).
Among the key functions of legal discourse, which characterize the actions of its participants, researchers single out the following: 1) regulatory function, aimed at establishing and preserving the norms and values that stipulate the interaction between the institute and the society, the agents and the clients, and between the agents within the institute; 2) performative function, manifested in communicative practices where the world of law and its symbolic structures are formed; 3) informative function, which deals both with the production of certain information flows in the institutional communication, and with generating, broadcasting and relaying meanings at the heart of an institution; 4) interpretative function, which consists of explaining the meanings of communicative actions of discourse participants and corresponding legal documents; 5) cumulative function, which is to develop the “institutional memory”; 6) presentational function – creating the image of the institution, its agents, and the authority of the law; 7) strategic function is manifested in the choice of regulatory communication strategies and tactics of interaction; 8) code function, which is the creation of a special language that contributes to achieving the goals and objectives of the institutional activity (Palashevskaya, 2010).
The judicial discourse, investigated in this article, is defined by scientists as a form of legal discourse, its speech and textual manifestation, verbal-symbolic expression of the process of communication within trial, considered in the socio-historical, national-cultural and situational contexts, based on the characteristics and intentions of its participants.
Since the ever increasing importance is placed upon the ways lawyers deliver speeches in a courtroom based on the principle of fair resolution of judicial conflicts, it is of particular interest to research the judicial discourse from the standpoint of linguistics with special regard to the language tools that provide a persuasive effect. The latter contribute to prevention of speech conflicts and achieving communicative goals of the speakers in the process of harmonious communication.
Problem Statement
The relationship between the participants of judicial discourse, the representatives of the State justice institution, and the public concerned, their roles and rules of conduct are conditioned by the norms of the institution of justice. This institutional type of discourse is also characterized by such systemically important features as a chronotopos (courtroom), a goal (a legal solution to a conflict, according to the current law), values manifested in the basic concepts of judicial discourse (law, justice, truth), strategies (clarification, regulation, control) (Ustinova, 2011).
Some researchers indicate that the main characteristic of the courtroom interaction is the asymmetry of the statuses among the participants of communication. This determines the speech behaviour of both professional participants (judge, prosecutor, barrister) and non-professional participants (witness, defendant). Another important characteristic of judicial discourse should be noted here and it is based on its institutional affiliation, namely: professional participants, despite the existing restrictions imposed by legal procedures, are given more power in regulating discourse processes during trials, as opposed to non-professional participants who are not supposed to exploit the initiative in a speech event (Dubrovskaya, 2017; Palashevskaya et al., 2017).
It is important to outline the main characteristics of contemporary judicial discourse, such as the institutionality caused by status-role relationships, emotiveness (display of strong emotions and spontaneous feelings), agonality (contradictions in interests and opinions), logical finality, terminology and persuasiveness. It must be noted that in the process of professional courtroom communication there is a transfer of information between the parties, which determines the explicit function of judicial discourse. At the same time, professional participants of trials assess information, which means there is an axiological function of judicial discourse, with emotional, emotional-intellectual and intellectual-logical components (Zaitseva, 2016).
Viewing the linguistic specifics of judicial discourse, it is important to emphasize the characteristic use of embedded clauses, archaic phrases and words, legal terms, verbosity, nominalization, lexical repetitions, etc. It is necessary to take into account such features of legal formulations as precision, persuasiveness and clarity of expressions, accessibility in comprehension (Litvishko & Miletova, 2019; Mattila, 2006). In the studies of judicial discourse, researchers link the problem of reflecting natural language in legal texts with the formation of new concepts, typical of this type of communication (Popova, 2016), where the language facilitates the disclosure and awareness of all communicative processes in the legal sphere (Litvishko, 2019).
Taking into consideration the fact that language is viewed as a powerful social manipulation instrument which shapes and structures the society (Shiryaeva et al., 2018), linguistic utterances that are used in court for the benefit of the defense or accusation are the focus of attention. The study of linguistic tools aimed at successful communication in judicial discourse is particularly important.
Research Questions
Research on the linguistic characteristics of judicial discourse, the stratagemic and tactical organization of speech in the process of social interaction is of specific interest, which is reflected in the strategies of hedging that help to prevent speech conflict, following the harmonious process of communication. Implementation of hedging, seen as an interpersonal rhetorical strategy, demonstrating the degree of the speaker’s commitment to the force of the conveyed speech acts (Fraser, 2010), as a way of speech insurance or speech caution, with the aim of concealing verbal influence through the deliberate evasion of the use of direct means of persuasion (Dafouz, 2008) – is the primary condition for reducing the threat directed to positive interaction.
Hedging, as a collective term referring to a number of auxiliary lexical, stylistic and grammatical elements, is used for reducing the degree of the author’s certainty, purposely expressing doubt or vagueness towards a statement, preventing or minimizing speech conflict. These language tools are presented in linguistic literature as lexical and grammatical items indicating uncertainty, tentativeness, fuzziness, and employed to avoid possible disagreement or conflict (Hyland, 1998); as modality devices contributing to the realization of politeness strategies (Vassileva, 2001); as “smallwords” expressing the communicative intention of the speakers and signalling the state of success of communication (Hasselgreen, 2004).
Hedging represents the rules of communication, the linguistic means of which regulate the degree of speech influence on a recipient, contribute to the efficient process of speech perception, harmonious communication, mitigation of face-threatening speech acts that demand actions or interfere with privacy and affect the reputation of interlocutors (Brown & Levinson, 1987). Linguistic tools working as hedges minimize the force of statements. These means are used by speakers or writers intentionally, to show uncertainty, vagueness, demonstration of communicative support, interest, attention. Harmonious dialogue and hedging become the characteristic forms of social interpretation of verbal and non-verbal behaviour of interlocutors, playing a key role in the concept of politeness and thus in the strategies of social interaction by preserving the “face” of speakers (Boncea, 2014; Overstreet, 2005).
In the studies investigating the language tools that function as hedges at the lexical, grammatical and stylistic levels, scientists highlight the following basic strategies:
- strategy of indetermination that adds vagueness, minimizing qualitative and quantitative explicitness of the proposition of utterances; it is represented by modal verbs expressing possibility (
- strategy of limitation/camouflage hedging, carried out with the help of metalinguistic operators (
- strategy of subjectivisation that is implemented through the use of combinations of personal pronouns with verbs of cognition (
- strategy of depersonalisation achieved by impersonal passive structures (
It is important to highlight that the abovementioned metalinguistic operators, the combinations of personal pronouns with verbs of cognition, modal adverbs and adverbs-approximators are considered by researchers of the English-language discourse to be discourse markers (lexical expressions, introductory phrases, discursive formulas, interpersonal metadiscourse markers, vague category markers) (Bagiyan et al., 2019; Dafouz, 2008; Fung & Carter, 2007; Hyland, 2004; Malyuga & McCarthy, 2018), which are used by addressers for structuring the discursive space, positioning participants of communication in a discursive event. They instruct the recipients about efficient ways of interpreting utterances, serve to express the speakers’ attitude and the stance towards propositional meaning, mitigate the force of statements by marking indirectness, distancing, vagueness, and thus are linked with harmonious speech interaction.
We emphasize that analyzing the implementation of the category of hedging in judicial discourse through depersonalisation, reference, direct use of modal words and metalinguistic operators provides an opportunity for effective dialogue, acknowledgement of impositions in terms of agreement (Alonso et al., 2012). Hedging helps to mitigate the force of statements that pose a threat to the speaker’s or listener’s “face” (imposition, disagreement, criticism), it is aimed at preventing and eliminating conflicts, at maintaining harmony in communicative interaction.
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this work is to study and analyze the language specifics of legal discourse in the courtroom procedure aimed at preventing speech conflict and maintaining harmonious process of communication. This contributes to the study of the language use in a specific social institution, the communicative orientation of the language of law.
Research Methods
In the study of language tools used for the implementation of hedging in the legal discourse, we have applied the following scientific methods: the continuous sampling method to collect and analyze the language material; the descriptive method to summarize and interpret the material under study; communicative-pragmatic method aimed at identifying the communicative intentions of speakers; context analysis method and quantitative analysis to organize the research material.
Data for analysis are drawn from the transcripts of the Steven Avery trial (Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, United States, 2007). 550 pages of English-language transcripts of court sessions were analyzed as a source of language material in order to identify and study the language tools contributing to an effective process of harmonious dialogue. 1,347 language units were found, of which 692 instances were of discourse markers, 537 instances – of modal verbs, 118 instances – of modal adverbs.
Findings
In the course of the analysis and systematization of the implementation of hedging in the language material, we have identified the use of such language tools that contribute to harmonious dialogue, prevention of speech conflict in trials, as:
- modal verbs (
- modal adverbs (
- discourse markers represented by verbs of cognition (
Text fragments below utilize hedging language tools in the speeches of professional participants in the judicial discourse. In the following example (1), modal verbs
(1) THE COURT: …. So
ATTORNEY KRATZ: There is, Judge, although there were no stipulations to note yesterday in our first testimony, there will be witnesses that are scheduled to begin today
THE COURT:
ATTORNEY STRANG:
THE COURT: All right (Steven Avery Trial Transcript Day 2, 2007, pp. 14-17).
The attorney appeals to the judge with a polite request to give him an opportunity to listen to the witnesses in the case, which probably, according to the lawyer, will help to reach agreements between the parties of the trial (
Example (2) presents the use of modal adverbs
(2) THE COURT: So, what you are saying is that your understanding is, from what I take it, exactly the opposite of Mr. Drumm’s understanding.
ATTORNEY KRATZ: I’m sure the camera he saw was a video camera and that has been turned over to the defense.
ATTORNEY BUTING: I would ask, if counsel is just discovering this cell phone incident today, and the way she described it,
ATTORNEY KRATZ:
THE COURT: How did this come to light? How did you know how to ask the questions about it, Mr. Buting?
In this discourse segment, modal adverbs (
The following example deals with the use of discourse markers
(3) ATTORNEY STRANG: So,
MICHAEL D. HALBACH: I don’t remember exactly if it was that night, or if it was the next day, or – it was one of those two….
ATTORNEY STRANG: … Was it Friday, already on the TV they were talking about the Avery Auto Salvage or flying over it,
MICHAEL D. HALBACH: I don’t recall, specifically, myself,
ATTORNEY STRANG:
MICHAEL D. HALBACH: Correct.
ATTORNEY STRANG: And then Friday and I know by Saturday, there was a lot of media coverage?
MICHAEL D. HALBACH: Yes.
ATTORNEY STRANG: Not that you were watching but,
MICHAEL D. HALBACH: Yes.
ATTORNEY STRANG: Did you – Did you have access to her computer passwords or account information for,
MICHAEL D. HALBACH: Cell phone, yes; computer password, yes (Steven Avery Trial Transcript Day 1, 2007, pp. 182-183).
As the example shows, the use of discourse markers is observed in both the speech of the attorney and the witness. All discourse markers used in this segment of speech function at the interpersonal level, indicating the understatement of the speakers’ attitude to the proposition of the statement, lessening the distance between the interlocutors, contributing to smooth and efficient interaction. Discourse markers
The results of the study show that the use of discourse markers as language tools of the category of hedging in judicial discourse facilitates emotional impact, enhances interest, participation, interactivity, informality, engagement in dialogue.
Conclusion
The research of hedging is certainly of great interest to linguists, as the speakers use the language tools of vagueness, uncertainty, indirectness in statements intentionally, in order to show concern about the positive reaction of the interlocutor. The use of hedges in judicial discourse plays an important role in the process of social interaction, contributing to its effectiveness.
By using modal verbs, modal adverbs, discourse markers, speakers reduce the degree of imposition in disagreements and contradictions purposely, softening the utterances with uncertainty, imprecision, indirectness in order to avoid the interlocutor’s rejection, all of which contributes to harmonious speech interaction, and therefore, to achieving communicative goals in accordance with social roles of the interlocutors.
References
- Alonso, R., Alonso, M., & Mariñas, L. (2012). Hedging: An exploratory study of pragmatic transfer in nonnative English readers’ rhetorical preferences. Ibérica, 23, 47-64.
- Bagiyan, A. Y., Shiryaeva, T. A., Alikaeva, L. S., Dotkulova, Z. O., & Toguzaeva, M. R. (2019). Forming professional identity in popular science IT discourse: discursive markers and their functional diapason. Humanities & Social Sciences Reviews, 7(6), 263-270.
- Boncea, I. (2014). Hedging Patterns Used as Mitigation and Politeness Strategies. Annals of the University of Craiova. Series: Philology, 2, 7-23.
- Brown, P., & Levinson, S. С. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in Language use. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
- Cheng, L., & Danesi, M. (2019). Exploring legal discourse: a sociosemiotic (re)construction. Social Semiotics, 29(3), 279-285. DOI: 10.1080/10350330.2019.1587841
- Dafouz, E. (2008). The pragmatic role of textual and interpersonal metadiscourse markers in the construction and attainment of persuasion: A cross-linguistic study of newspaper discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 40(1), 95-113. DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2007.10.003
- Dubrovskaya, T. (2017). Metapragmatics of Аdministering Justice in Russian and English Judicial Discourse. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 21(1), 73-90. DOI: 10.22363/2312-9182-2017-21-1-73-90
- Fraser, B. (2010). Pragmatic competence: The case of hedging. In G. Kaltenboeck, (Ed.), New Approaches to Hedging (pp. 15-34). Bingley: Emerald Publishing.
- Fung, L., & Carter, R. (2007). Discourse Markers and Spoken English: Native and Learner Use in Pedagogic Settings. Applied Linguistics, 28(3), 410-439.
- Hasselgreen, A. (2004). Testing the spoken English of young Norwegians: A study of test validity and the role of “smallwords” in contributing to pupils’ fluency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Hyland, K. (1998). Hedging in scientific research articles. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
- Hyland, K. (2004). Disciplinary interactions: Metadiscourse in L2 postgraduate writing. Journal of second language writing, 3(2), 133-151.
- Krapivkina, O. A. (2016). Dve grani diskursa – dve ipostasi subyekta [Two edges of discourse – two guises of the subject]. Sibirskij filologicheskij zhurnal [Siberian Journal of Philology], 1, 137-143. DOI 10.17223/18137083/54/16
- Litvishko, O. M. (2019). Strukturnye osobennosti bigramm-kollokatsii v mezhdunarodnyh yuridicheskih dokumentah [Structural Peculiarities of Bigram-Collocations in Legal English]. Vestnik Volgogradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Seriya 2. Yazykoznanie [Science Journal Volgograd State University. Linguistics], 18(2), 37-47. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15688/jvolsu2.2019.2.4
- Litvishko, O., & Miletova, E. (2019). Structural Peculiarities of Terminological System of International Law (Based on ILO Conventions). The European Proceedings of Social & Behavioural Sciences, LVIII – SCTCMG 2018, 2324-2335.
- Malyuga, E., & McCarthy, M. (2018). English and Russian vague category markers in business discourse: Linguistic identity aspects. Journal of Pragmatics, 135, 39-52.
- Martin, P. (2003). The pragmatic rhetorical strategy of hedging in academic writing. Vigo International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1, 57-72.
- Mattila, H. E. S. (2006). Comparative legal linguistics. England: Ashgate Publishing Limited.
- Overstreet, M. (2005). And stuff und so: Investigating pragmatic expressions in English and German. Journal of Pragmatics, 37, 1845-1864.
- Palashevskaya, I. V. (2010). Funktsii yuridicheskogo diskursa i dejstviya ego uchastnikov [Functions of legal discourse and actions of its actors]. Izvestiya Samarskogo nauchnogo tsentra Rossiyskoy akademii nauk [News of Samara Scientific Centre of Russian Academy of Sciences], 5, 535‐540/
- Palashevskaya, I. V., Leontiev, V. V., Kurchenkova, E. A., Stepanova, E. D., & Bulanov, D. S. (2017). Correlations of status positions of courtroom discourse participants. XLinguae, 10(3), 45-56. DOI: 10.18355/XL.2017.10.03.04
- Popova, E. V. (2016). Priroda sudebnogo diskursa [The nature of judicial discourse]. Vestnik Orenburgskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta [Orenburg State University Bulletin], 6, 24-29 [in Rus.].
- Shiryaeva, T. A., Gelyaeva, A. I., Alikaev, R. S., Huchinaeva, D. D., & Toguzaeva, M. R. (2018). A theory-driven framework for the study of language in business. XLinguae, 11(1), 82-90. DOI: 10.18355/XL.2018.11.01.08
- Steven Avery Jury Trial Transcript (2007). Jury Trial Transcript Day 1, 12 February 2007. Retrieved from: http://www.stevenaverycase.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Jury-Trial-Transcript-Day-1-2007Feb12.pdf
- Steven Avery Jury Trial Transcript (2007). Jury Trial Transcript Day 2, 13 February 2007. Retrieved from: http://www.stevenaverycase.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Jury-Trial-Transcript-Day-2-2007Feb13.pdf
- Ustinova, K. A. (2011). Sudebnyj diskurs kak raznovidnost' yuridicheskogo diskursa [Judicial discourse as a kind of legal discourse]. Al'manah sovremennoj nauki i obrazovaniya. [Modern science and education almanac], 3(46), 238-239.
- Vassileva, I. (2001). Commitment and Detachment in English and Bulgarian Academic Writing. English for Specific Purposes, 20(1), 83-102.
- Zaitseva, M. A. (2016). Sudebnyj diskurs: rechevye strategii i taktiki, yazykovye sredstva vyrazheniya konflikta [Judicial discourse: speech strategies and tactics, language means of conflict expression]. Pervyj nezavisimyj nauchnyj vestnik [First Independent Scientific Journal], 6, 74-78.
Copyright information
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
About this article
Publication Date
20 November 2020
Article Doi
eBook ISBN
978-1-80296-094-5
Publisher
European Publisher
Volume
95
Print ISBN (optional)
-
Edition Number
1st Edition
Pages
1-1241
Subjects
Sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, bilingualism, multilingualism
Cite this article as:
Shiryaeva, T. A., Avakova, M. L., & Sardalovа, L. R. (2020). Language Tools For A Harmonious Dialogue In The English Legal Discourse. In Е. Tareva, & T. N. Bokova (Eds.), Dialogue of Cultures - Culture of Dialogue: from Conflicting to Understanding, vol 95. European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences (pp. 1165-1174). European Publisher. https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2020.11.03.123