Tenor in Judicial Reasoning

Abstract

This paper juxtaposes the modelling of language and context in systemic functional linguistics (SFL) with a modelling of legal relations in jurisprudence (that of W. N. Hohfeld), in order to discuss realizations of tenor in legal discourse in the context of the High Court of Australia. In particular, the paper focuses on choices of modality in the judicial reasoning, that is judgments, of the different judges in a single case. The case of Al-Kateb was chosen because all seven High Court Judges gave judgments and because of the close result: four judges in the majority and three dissenting. While textual analysis suggests potential discursive features of the judgment register, it also suggests differences in the repertoire of individual judges.

A Contrastive Study of Heteroglossia in the Reasoning of Criminal Judgments of Chinese Mainland and Hong Kong

“…However, the contrastive study of the reasoning of criminal judgments of Chinese mainland and Hong Kong remains underexplored. Furthermore, to date, linguists have associated legal reasoning with semantics, structuralist, style, rhetoric, semiotics and systemic functional grammar (e.g., Stamper, 1991;Neumann, 2005;Dong, 2010;Mazzi, 2010;Manzin, 2012;Verenich, 2012;Huisman & Blackshield, 2014), while its inherent heteroglossic nature is underrepresented.…”

A Forensic Linguistic Analysis of Modality on Prosecutors’ Resolutions

“…Another, by Zelenka (2013) on the Modality in the Legal Document that the modal shall was the overused and misused in the legal documents. Among the frequently used modals, may is polysemous which gave an ambiguous meaning (Huisman & Blackshield, 2014). Similarly, some researches traversed on different aspects of forensic linguistics like courtroom questioning (Hale, 1999;Catoto, 2017), authorship identification (Grant, 2008;Nieto et al, 2008), and on online identification (Grant & Macleod, 2016).…”