The article aims to contribute a genre-based description of the realisation of Concession in EU judicial discourse. The analysis has been carried out on a corpus of judgments issued by the EU court of last instance, i.e. the European Court of Justice with the intention to identify the patterns and markers of Concession in judicial argumentation.In the analysis the author used the concept of Concession developed by Couper-Kuhlen and Thompson (1999 following the assumptions underlying Interactional Linguistics. The results revealed the most frequent patterns and markers of Concession in judicial discourse. At the same time, they led the author to the conclusion that the interactional model of Concession developed for analysing the spoken mode of language may successfully be applied in the examination of written data. 1 Among the few linguistic studies on judicial argumentation are analyses carried out by Mazzi (2005Mazzi ( , 2006Mazzi ( , 2007, in which the author investigates linguistic constituents of argumentative discourse in judicial texts.

Approached as an interactional phenomenon, stance is realised through varied linguistic devices and practices which need not be overtly evaluative. Say, the basic communication verb which indicates the source of knowledge and, thus, perspectivises the information imparted by speakers, is one such resource. Its stancetaking potential is exploited, among other settings, in the courtroom or in the police interview room, where institutional authority is exerted and the facts of legal stories are ‘fixed’ and formulated ( Holt and Johnson, 2010 ; and Johnson, 2014 ). Combining corpus and discourse-analytic perspectives ( Partington et al., 2013 ), this study explores the patterns of use and distribution of the verb say in a libel trial, demonstrating its role in the interactional co-construction of stance. It also provides insight into how more powerful participants use say as a means of claiming epistemic priority and asserting authority – or more broadly, to position themselves towards less powerful speakers. The analysis focusses in particular on the role of say in ‘shifting standpoints’, ‘challenging standpoints’, ‘reality reconstruction’ and ‘standpoint continuity’.

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The article deals with EU judicial rhetoric and aims to demonstrate how a selection of modal adverbs of certainty (indeed, clearly, (not) necessarily and of course) are used in the Opinions of the Advocates General at the European Court of Justice (ECJ). To this end, it focuses on the rhetorical functions of these adverbs, such as adding emphasis, showing a high degree of commitment and backgrounding alternative viewpoints. The study applies the notions of stance and engagement (Hyland, 2005) and builds on the research into modal adverbs of certainty reported in Simon-Vandenbergen and Aijmer (2007). In summary, the analysis sheds light on the rhetorical potential of modal adverbs, stressing the dialogic dimension of legal opinion writing.

This study investigates the use of progressives with mental verbs in courtroom talk and shows a range of subjective meanings which are not delivered by the simple form. Looking at the data from a British libel trial, it explores patterned co-occurrences with first-person subjects vs. second- and third-person subjects, revealing both emphatic, polite and interpretative uses of the analyzed items. In addition, context-sensitivity and speaker status (judge vs. other participants) are shown to be significant factors affecting both the choice of verbs and their interactional configurations. The findings reveal not only well-established uses of “progressive statives” (wonder and think) but also less conventional ones which convey intensity and expressivity (e.g., understand, remember and want). It is also revealed that the use of progressives with mental verbs differs from the deployment of progressives with communication verbs. In both groups of verbs, however, the interpretative meaning is common. In sum, the study situates progressives with mental verbs among stancetaking resources which speakers employ to share their thoughts, wishes and desires, and to position themselves against other interactants and their propositions.