Krisda Chaemsaithong

Underpinned by the assumption that social categorizations emerge from discursive practices performed within the interactional context, this study examines the discursive process in which an expert witness constructs and negotiates persuasive courtroom accounts. Using insights from the concept of ‘footing’ and the framework of stance and engagement, this study reveals the ways in which an expert witness calls upon a range of interactional devices to appropriate the desired footing and labeling ca

This study examines the discursive history and interactive aspects of the opening statement in Anglo-American courts. Informed by the concepts of stance and engagement, the study explicates the process of conceptual interaction which turns the jurors into co-constructors of the discourse, thereby making the opening statement fictively dialogic. Drawing upon 51 opening statements as recorded in Proceedings of the Old Bailey, between 1759 and 1789, the qualitative and quantitative analysis reveals

Abstract This investigation examines the interactional dimension of the preface section of an early form of news discourse. Informed by the framework of metadiscourse and incorporating insights from the study of stance and evaluation, this study explicates the ways in which the witchcraft pamphleteers strategically structured and designed the texts to secure readers' agreement through conceptual interaction. Differences in the selection of metadiscourse contributed to different writer identities

This paper invites the reader to revisit the accused individuals’ response strategies in the Salem witchcraft trials from the perspective of pragmatic politeness. However, politeness, as used in this paper, refers to politeness to self, for the sake of one’s face — a concept that is different from, yet not incompatible with, that of Brown and Levinson (1987). The paper argues that it is more realistic to examine the trials from this perspective because the accused’s responses were in part driven

Abstract Drawing upon a corpus of five high-profile contemporary Anglo-American trials, this study explores and elucidates, qualitatively and quantitatively, the process of evaluative stancetaking in courtroom opening statements. In particular, the study examines such stance resources as self-mention, hedges, boosters, and attitude markers. The findings reveal that evaluative stance expressions constitute an integral part of the opening statements of both the prosecution and defense lawyers, exh

This investigation examines different speaking roles that lawyers may shift into, and depart from, in the monologic genre of the opening statement in three American trials, incorporating Goffman’s concept of Footing (1981) into an analysis of three high-profile trials. The findings reveal that lawyers take on three distinct discursive roles: The storyteller, the interlocutor, and the animator. In addition, indexical resources commonly associated with each role are explored which serve to context

Abstract This study presents an empirical study of audience orientation, investigating lawyers’ overt interpersonal negotiation with jurors. Drawing upon a corpus of the closing arguments of five high-profile American trials, the quantitative and qualitative analysis identifies the traces and degree of the jury’s presence through pronominal choices, questions, directives, references to shared knowledge and asides. Such relational practice does not merely “oil the wheels” of courtroom communicati

This study seeks to examine how the use of names serves to accomplish the process of identity construction in institutional discourse. Drawing upon six opening addresses from three high-profile trials, the study analyzes the forms, functions, and frequency of names that lawyers use to refer to defendants and victims in their narratives. The quantitative and qualitative analysis reveals that the prosecution and the defense differ starkly in how they use names to construct the identities of the ch

Underpinned by the assumption that the import of the facts and the law in the courtroom depends on how they are invoked and (re)presented mainly through language use by courtroom interactants, this functional linguistic study critically scrutinizes representation strategies that opposing lawyers use to position social actors in their narratives, integrating Halliday’s concept of transitivity and van Leeuwen’s inventory of social actor representation. The findings reveal that the two sides consis

Abstract Conceptualizing person markers as an instrument of ideological negotiation and persuasion, this study explores the relationships between language, interaction and identity in the context of courtroom opening statements. The study quantitatively and qualitatively analyzes the use of first- and second-person markers. Based on a corpus of three high-profile trials, the findings indicate that person markers are pragmatically conditioned and contribute to making opening statement argumentati