Court Speeches Research Articles

Costruction of the judicial defense speech: based on the material of court speeches by Y.S. Kiselev

The construction of a public speech is one of the most important components of creating a convincing oratorical performance. Despite the constant interest of researchers in the challenges of constructing a court speech, the arrangement of structural elements, the issue remains unresolved in practical aspect: modern court speakers need recommendations that would contribute to creating effective defense statements. The purpose of this research is to analyze the composition of successful court speeches of the famous Soviet lawyer Y.S. Kiselev, aimed at identifying the features of arrangement of the material, factors that condition this or that disposition, and on this basis to identify various options for the arrangement of content elements contributing to the creation of a convincing speech. Using the method of compositional analysis, as well as rhetorical analysis, descriptive and structural methods, we investigate thirteen effective judicial defense speeches by Y.S. Kiselev. Having analyzed the types of introductions used by him, we have established a high degree of viability of using hyped up or unexpected beginning, as well as conditionality of the choice of the type of introduction by the prosecutor, readiness of the audience to perceive the defense speech, and attitude of the audience to the circumstances of the case. The analysis of the main part of Kiselev’s speeches allows to identify the micro themes presented in all his defense statements, as well as conditionality of a number of micro themes by the circumstances of the case, the arguments of the prosecution, and the chosen line of defense. The conclusion reveals structural elements in all the speeches of the well-known lawyer under study: a clearly expressed position of the defense in the case, a pathetic and educational moment, and an appeal to the court for leniency or acquittal of the defendant. In general, the construction of the defense speech is conditioned by the circumstances of the case, the position of the prosecution, the chosen line of defense, the specifics of the audience, as well as the moral qualities, erudition and communicative skills of the speaker.

Characteristics of the Defendant and the Victim in Forensic Rhetoric

Defendants’ and victims’ characteristic has always been an important part of forensic rhetoric in a jury trial. This research featured speeches by such famous Russian lawyers and prosecutors of the XIX century as F. N. Plevako, N. V. Muravyov, P. A. Aleksandrov, and A. F. Koni, who described the criminal and the victim in their speeches to offer the jury a general insight into the case and allow them to develop a legal and moral profile of the defendant and the complainant. The study introduces a theoretical and practical understanding of the rhetorical significance of this element of forensic speech as part of persuasion technique in a jury trial. The results obtained can be used as recommendations for practicing lawyers. The following axiological and semantic provisions can optimize the compilation of modern court speeches. 1. Negative description of the victim can make the jury distrust the victim’s statement, which is a positive factor for the defense. 2. If the lawyer manages to evoke compassion and pity for the victim, it may reduce the defendant's chances for an acquittal or mitigation. 3. Stories from the defendant’s childhood that reveal their character development give the speaker the opportunity to change the jury’s attitude. 4. A portrait given by individual qualities also makes it possible to form a necessary attitude to the personality of the defendant.

REPRESENTATIVE FORMS AND SPEECH GENRES OF UKRAINIAN JUDICIAL DISCOURSE

The article is devoted to the definition of linguo-pragmatic parameters of judicial discourse, in particular, formal aspects and types of speech genres are emphasized. Oral and written forms of judicial discourse functioning are considered. The main speech genres of the Ukrainian judicial discourse are singled out and characterized. Genres such as: instruction, announcement, petition, confirmation / denial, interrogation, court speech, court decision were analyzed. It has been proven that the announcement is a monologue speech of a regulatory nature that opens and ends the judicial session; the instruction is a regulatory detailed response of professional participants in the court process; the motion is a request for the involvement of additional information, unknown before the direct consideration of the case in the court process; confirmation / refutation is an argumentative interpretation and commentary on the course of the court session for the direct participants; the interrogation covers the questioning-relevant interaction between the main participants in the judicial process; a court speech is a reasoned presentation of a position in the form of a monologue; a court decision is a monologue speech of a judge, which has a verdictive character.

Direct and Indirect Speech Acts in Court Speeches

Speech acts theory is not about words, phrases or sentences which are mainly used as units of interaction between people, but basically about actions that are achieved through such utterances. 'Speech acts theory' belongs to the realm of Pragmatics. In this study, selected stretches of discourse of two court speeches are highlighted. These trailers emerge in a formal setting in the presence of an authority who makes judgments on disputes and claims. They are analyzed based on Searle's view of illocutionary act to find out types of direct and indirect speech acts that are employed by interlocutors in court trials. The study shows that there is little difference between the uses of the two acts depending on the speaker's role. Directives, declaratives and other acts are used by those who are in authority while assertives are employed by those who are to answer questions given by the former.

Allison Glazebrook. Sexual Labor in the Athenian Courts.

Allison Glazebrook’s monograph, Sexual Labor in the Athenian Courts, is the product of the author’s expertise on sexual laborers in ancient Athens. The book comes at a time when several monographs dedicated to sexual labor have appeared, but it carves a notable space for itself in the literature. Glazebrook distinguishes her work from that of, for example, Konstantinos Kapparis and Edward Cohen, both by topic and form. She is not interested in writing “a social history of sexual labor” (5) but rather in using the figure of the male and female sex laborer in forensic oratory as a means for exploring Athenian ideas and attitudes on gender, the body, the household, and citizenship. Counting herself among historians such as Josiah Ober and Matthew Christ, she differentiates her method by eschewing the tendency to mine the orators for historical data at the expense of the text’s literary character. Glazebrook “is interested in how speakers manipulate the attitudes and practices in their discourses around sexual labor to cement and problematize social and civic boundaries” (4). Thus, she embraces the literary quality of the texts in the service of revealing Athenian ideology. To do so, each chapter treats a single court speech holistically. As opposed to the clever and privileged hetaira of other genres, oratory presents a broad range of sex laborer types that threaten the stability of the household and the city. Her readings make use of the anxieties revealed by the orators to shine a light on broader questions of, for instance, women’s status and pederasty.

The Legacy of the Human Rights Movement: Prosecutor-General Fritz Bauer on Genocide and Human Rights

The paper is devoted to the legacy of Fritz Bauer — the Prosecutor General of the Land of Hesse in West Germany — and analyzes his understanding of the possibility of building the rule of law in Germany, understanding the criminal past of Germany and realizing the responsibility of the German citizens for the genocide of the Jewish people. Fritz Bauer was one of the most consistent supporters of the criminal prosecution against Nazi criminals in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). In Bauer’s view, the Nuremberg trials were supposed to witness the desire of the German state to restore the rule of law, preserve the memory of millions of victims of Nazism, celebrate the triumph of justice and human rights. In the course of the court proceedings, Fritz Bauer sought to show that millions of German citizens who supported the Hitler regime and shared the ideology of National Socialism were responsible for Nazi atrocities. The merit of Fritz Bauer’s goal was to recognize the Third Reich as an illegitimate State and rehabilitate the participants of the Anti-Hitler Resistance Movement. In his articles and court speeches, Bauer justified the right of citizens to resist the criminal authorities, argued that disobeying criminal orders was the only possible option for lawful behavior in an illegitimate State. Fritz Bauer was convinced that it was possible to prevent the repetition of the past and prevent the neo-Nazis from coming to power only through the democratic education of the younger generation of the Germans, ensuring universal respect for human rights and dignity.

Myśl polityczno-prawna jako element argumentacji w mowach sądowych. Uwagi na marginesie procesu komunistów we Lwowie (1922–1923)

Legal-political Ideas as Elements of Argumentation in Court Speeches – Remarks on the Communists’ Trials in Lwów (1922–1923) The legacy of legal-political ideologists is seldom used as an element of argumentation in court. The situation is different in proceedings focussing on political crimes, in particular, the trials taking place in disruptive moments of history. One of such moments was the period after Poland regained independence, when the Soviet Union posed not only a military threat, but also one of doctrinal influence. The objective of the paper was to verify the hypothesis that the trial of communists which took place in Lwów in late 1922 / early 1923 (known as the St. Jura trial) was significant not only in terms of its legal-criminal aspects, but was also important from a historical and doctrinal perspective. The verification of the hypothesis was based on the analysis of court speeches, especially their elements including references to the legacy of legal-political ideas. Additionally, the paper presents legal-political ideas as highly argumentative material that may be, and perhaps should be, used in legal practice today.

Speakers Diffident and Speakers Brash in the Athenian Courts

Abstract In many of the surviving Athenian law court speeches, litigants and sunēgoroi claim that, as amateurs, they come to trial at a disadvantage. Occasionally, they acknowledge a reputation for wishing to advance themselves by a display of rhetorical abilities. Whatever stance the speaker takes, these maneuvers add to the complex texture of Attic oratory. We find a remarkable variety of approaches, e. g., Antiphon giving a Lesbian-speaking client an ornate acknowledgment in lightly Ionicized Attic of his rhetorical inadequacy; Lysias posing as a forensic novice when he represents himself; Dinarchus mimicking a speaker at a loss for words; Lycurgus warning the jury that the defendant will (mis)represent himself as an amateur under attack by a malicious prosecutor. And the orator who has, however falsely, spoken to his audience of his own sense of formidable rhetorical challenge might thereby be better prepared to improvise his response to his opponents’ speeches. Alcidamas, champion of improvisation, would be sympathetic.

Category of Situationality in Narrative Model of Artistic and Legal Discourse

The subject of research in this article is the specificity of the category of discursive situationality, which determined the problematics of the novel “Bleak House” by Ch. Dickens (1853). The purpose of the article is to build a typology of situationality (the situationality is prototypical, intertextual, intentional, coherent) and to identify the means of linguistic representation of the category of situationality in a text that functions in the conditions of interaction of two discourses — legal and artistic. Language techniques representing various types of situationality are divided into textual ones (“detention” technique, interruption of narrative angles, prolonged syntax, etc.), lexical-semantic ones, including a class of stylistic figures of speech (metaphor, precedent name, onomastic allusion, comparison, oxymoron, irony, sarcasm, emotive syntax, etc.) and style, reflecting the inclusion of elements of official business style in artistic speech (verbal nouns, verb-nominal combinations, etc.). Elements of the official business style of speech are expressed in the speeches of the characters during the interrogation, in court speeches, in the business correspondence of the heroes of the novel, and they are also fragmentarily woven into the author’s narrative (they are highlighted with quotation marks). The study emphasizes that the category of discursive situationality is manifested at all levels of the implementation of the narrative model of artistic and legal discourse.

Judgment in the Fourth-Century BCE Athenian Courts as Anti-Tragedy: Demosthenes's On the Crown

AbstractIn 330 BCE, before a jury of 501 Athenian citizens, the statesman Demosthenes delivered what would become his most famous court speech, On the Crown. Commentators have called the speech “tragic” owing to the litigant's unusual appropriation of tropes from Attic tragedy to make his case. I offer an alternative reading of Demosthenes's speech that rests upon an alternative approach to theorizing democratic judgment. I argue that the rhetorical force and political significance of Demosthenes's metaphors, linguistic expressions and ideas depend upon the institutional setting in which they were delivered. This is because within each institutional site, a specific political practice of judgment is taking place that structures the reception of and response to ideas and images. Demosthenes's speech is in fact “anti-tragic” and reflects the democratic practice for which it was created.

Persuasion prosody in prosecutor’s speech: Ukrainian and english

This paper presents the research of prosodic means conveying the persuasion modality in a prosecutor’s speech in court. The material under study consists of English and Ukrainian speeches of the prosecutors (the total duration time is 16 hours). The results of the experimental material examination demonstrate common and specific characteristics of prosody components (melody, loudness, tempo, timber and sentence stress) in English and Ukrainian. Pragmatics of prosody semantics and correlation between its parameters have been proved. It has been stated that in both English and Ukrainian an utterance becomes emphatic due to the prosodic means of persuasion in a prosecutor’s speech as follows: 1) changes of tempo; 2) changes of the pitch of a voice; 3) replacements of the rising tone with the falling one and vice versa; 4) usage of complex tones; 5) use of an interrupted ascending or descending scale; 6) change of sentence stress type; 7) division of a sense group into two or more parts. The above mentioned facts enable us to conclude that: while describing the first of these aspects of typological similarity of prosody in the compared languages, the parameters of the pitch component of intonation are most informative when differentiating attitudinal ones. The specificity of interaction between prosodic and grammar means when expressing persuasion in Ukrainian and English prosecutor’s speech is caused by a degree of distinction between the grammatical and vocabulary systems of the compared languages.

Syntactic Expression of Logical Topos in the Speeches of Russian Lawyers of the Late 19th and Early 20th Century

In the article, we make an attempt to relate logical topoi, rhetorical figures, and syntactic constructions. The research is based on the court speeches of Russian lawyers of late 19th and early 20th century. This period is considered to be the Golden Age of the Russian lawyer eloquence, thus the speeches delivered at that time by famous Russian lawyers in jury trials are of particular interest for the analysis. The speeches were chosen at random as the focus was not on the orators’ individual style but on their general strategies of syntactic expression of topoi. Although topoi have been an indispensable part of rhetorical invention since Antiquity, there still exists a discrepancy in their interpretation. In different time periods, they were regarded as the source of arguments, as clichés and even as themes that can be modified depending on orator’s objectives. In the article, we focus on the approach, which involves trichotomic classification, which includes logical topoi that are connected with logical operations. The most common topoi in lawyers speeches are those of time and place and genus and species . Within the framework of our study, they are analyzed in terms of logical operations and set theory, as well as structural schemes of sentences which were further connected with respective rhetorical figures (their functions being described for each case). The structural schemes’ analysis we used follow the principles described in Russian Grammar (1980). In the final part of the article, the results of the study are summarized. Logical operations typical for the topoi of time and place and genus and species are provided along with the most common syntactic schemes of sentences and rhetorical figures. We believe that this approach to the analysis of topoi can be beneficial both in theoretical and practical perspective and can be common to analyze the logical basis of lawyers’ argumentation, the major component of their eloquence.

Legal Discourse as a Multi-Dimensional Integrated Phenomenon and Legal Linguistics as a Syncretic Science

The article introduces legal discourse as part of a complex communicative activity. It is an integrative interdisciplinary phenomenon on the border of jurisprudence and linguistics. The research objective was to establish the constituent parts of legal discourse, which includes legal texts, related scientific literature, and other documents. Legal linguistics is a generalizing discipline that studies the interaction of language and law. The line between legal discourse and other discourses is hard to define. Legal discourse is characterized by unified subjects, procedures, circumstances, and impersonality, that is, the absence of recipient and sender, hence the abundance of impersonal verb forms and impersonal constructions. Legal texts are devoid of national marks, and the vocabulary has equivalents in other languages. The present research was the first to designate a set of texts that make up legal discourse, i.e. texts of laws, decrees, scientific literature on legal matters, various legal documents, judicial texts, texts of interrogations, court speeches, expert opinion, etc. Although legal discourse and legal linguistics have different subjects and tasks, they share the same object, i.e. the interaction of language and law. Legal linguistics is an integrative science based on linguistics and legal theory, which uses achievements of philosophy, psychology, sociology, ethics, cognitive linguistics, pragmalinguistics, linguistic conflictology, etc.

Sociolinguistic Analysis Of Court Speech

This article discusses and illuminates the sociolinguistic analysis of Court Speech. Language and thinking, language and society, language and culture relations today are engaged in the study of problems in linguistics, such as psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmalinguistics, lingvocultrology, cognitive linguistics and their interdependent relationship. Unlike systemic linguistics, the fact that speech activity is the most important object of linguistic research, which has become a prelude to new perspectives, new interpretations, leads to the emergence of topical scientific problems and views as linguistics develops. In this sense, the study of the speech phenomena of linguistic units in linguistics in the sociolinguistic direction, the study of the state of speech in relation to social status, provided an opportunity to conduct sociolinguistic research in Uzbek linguistics. According to Professor Mahmudov, the direction of sociolinguistics in world linguistics, or rather the science, has emerged as a result of a comprehensive understanding of the strong connection between language and society, the understanding of the many intersecting points of linguistics and sociology [1. 13]. The above issues are covered in the article.

PERCEPTED INTONATION FEATURES OF ENGLISH PUBLIC SPEECHES (BASED ON THE MATERIAL OF PREACHING AND TRIAL DISCOURSES)

The article is dedicated to the results of the audit analysis of the texts of oral discourses (preaching and trial). The purpose of this article is to identify the features of the intonation organization of the texts of oral English sermons and court speeches. The object of study is preaching and trial discourses as a special kind of institutional discourse of persuasive type. The subject of the research is the peculiarities of the intonation organization of oral English sermons and court speeches. To achieve this goal, a phonetic study of the perceived prosodic characteristics of speech realizations of sermons and court speeches was conducted, in the process of which the method of scientific observation (subjective) was used, which contains audit and audit analysis of selected objects and identification of the phonological status of the studied units; quantitative analysis made it possible to interpret the data obtained empirically during the audit analysis. On the basis of the conducted audit analysis it is possible to draw certain conclusions concerning the intonation organization common for the researched discourses. The auditors' identification of parts of the researched sermons and court speeches proved the validity of their division into the compositional parts mentioned above and made it possible to conclude that there are certain linguistic factors that allow to identify parts of the text with high probability. The leading intonation parameter to enhance the persuasive effect of speeches was the tempo. The melodic component of intonation, namely the melodic contour, has also proved to be a powerful intonation tool for influencing and achieving a persuasive effect, while volume is not an important intonation parameter involved in persuasion. The perspective of the research is seen in conducting a comprehensive instrumentalphonetic study to verify the data obtained on the prosodic organization of persuasive statements in preaching and trial discourses.

Conceptualisation of the notion “justice” in F. N. Plevako speeches

The article deals with judicial eloquence issues from the standpoint of cognitive linguistics and the theory of metaphor. It is exemplified by excerpts from court speeches of a famous Russian lawyer Feodor N. Plevako.

INTONATION PECULIARITIES OF ENGLISH JUDICIAL DISCOURSE

The article is devoted to the description of the results of the auditory analysis of the texts belonging to a judicial discourse. The immediate aim of the article is to identify the peculiarities of the intonation organization of the oral English court speeches. The object of the study is judicial discourse as a special type of institutional discourse of persuasive type. The subject of the study is the peculiarities of the intonation organization of oral court speeches, proclaimed during court hearings by a defence counsel and a prosecutor. To achieve the aim, a phonetic study of the perceived prosodic characteristics of speech realizations of court speech was carried out, in the process of which the subjective method of scientific observation was used, which contains auditive and auditory analysis of the selected objects as well as determining the phonological status of the studied units; quantitative analysis made it possible to interpret the data obtained empirically during the auditory analysis. The conducted auditive and auditory analysis made it possible to draw certain conclusions concerning the intonation organization common for the studied oral texts of judicial discourse. The identification by the auditors of parts of the court speeches of the prosecutor and the defence counsel proved the validity of their division into the compositional parts and made it possible to conclude that there are certain linguistic factors that allow to identify parts of the text with the high degree of probability. The leading intonation parameter for achieving or strengthening the convincing effect of the speeches is considered the tempo. The melodic component of intonation, namely the melodic contour, has also proved to be a powerful intonation means of influencing and achieving a persuasive effect, while loudness is not considered to be an important intonation parameter involved in persuasion. The conducted study has identified the role of the components of intonation (pitch, loudness and tempo) in the implementation of the function of persuasion of the institutional discourse.

Особенности англоязычного юридического дискурса в когнитивно-прагматическом аспекте (на материале фильмов «Déjà vu», «The Judge»)

The article deals with the study of the English-language legal discourse conducted on the material of modern slang, court speeches of lawyers and prosecutors. Legal discourse is treated as an actual social phenomenon that has become the subject of Philology study. The features of the legal discourse are studied in the cognitive-pragmatic aspect, in the context of semantic, lexical, syntactic features of their actualization in oral speech. The article states the idea that all the participants of the legal discourse tend to achieve persuasiveness and expressiveness of their speech, and the cognitive and pragmatic aspect of the discourse requires to choose such language tools that can have the desired effect. This idea proves the fact that not all the statements are generated in the law language. In some situations, it`s possible to achieve this goal with the help of additional means of language that operate outside the law language. For this reason, metonymic neologisms appear in legal discourse, adding to English-language slang, and neutral vocabulary moves to the sphere of legal discourse and legal terms.

REPEAT AS ONE OF THE KEY FACTORS OF VERBAL INFLUENCE (ON MATERIAL OF ADVOCATE PROFESSIONALS)

Investigation of court speeches actively attracts the attention of modern linguists, which testify to the solid work of N. Alekseyev, V. Devyatkin, R. Katsativ, O. Leontiev, O. Likas and others. The linguistic repetition as an important feature of all levels of the language belongs to a range of phenomena that are constantly at the center of the attention of researchers, and although its separate types are described in detail in the scientific literature, the generally accepted views on the essence and functional properties of repetition in the judicial discourse that defines the general orientation and relevance of the proposed article, and expresses the attraction of the original factual material - the judicial speech of Yu. A. Kaplan in defense of G. D. Pavlova, placed in the collection Judicial speeches of advocates of Ukr aini . The purpose of the article is to study and find out the functions of lexical and syntactic repetitions in a defense lawyer's speech. The objective provided for the following tasks: to consider and analyze different approaches to the definition of repetition; to study the lexical and syntactic features of the repetition; to find out the most commonly used types of repetition that have a suggestive charge in a defense lawyer's speech. The object of analysis is a protective speech by the lawyer Yu. A. Kaplan in defense of GD Pavlova. The subject is the discovery of structural-functional, stylistic and suggestive features of lexical and syntactic repetitions in a defense advocate's speech. The research material is the text of the legal pronouncement by a lawyer, presented in the collection Judicial speeches of lawyers of Ukraine. The basic methods of our study were a structural method that helped to identify the main structural-functional and stylistic features of lexical and syntactic repetitions; Quantitative calculations that allowed the dynamics of the use of certain fixed repetitive tokens in the text.

COURT DEBATES AT COMMERCIAL COURT PROCEEDINGS

The article researches the innovations of commercial court proceedings, and namely the Court debates. The participants of a case (Plaintiff, Defendant, their representatives and the third parties) give speeches at the end of a Court session. The Court debates are the final stage of the court proceedings and precede a Court decree of a case. The court debates imply a court speech and the replies of the parties. This innovation incidental to general court proceedings. The court debates are not practiced while summary jurisdiction. A court speech during the debates is a right and not an obligation of the Parties. In addition to that, non-practicing the court debates will not lead to court decree repeal of a case based on infringement of the rules of law. But the research institute should not be underestimated, because only the court debates make it possible for the parties to prove their position based on the factual background of a case, the evidences gained at the prior stage and the legal foundation. Due to the fact that the debates are the innovation of the commercial court proceedings; they are to be scientifically researched in detail, their meaning, content and elements are to be determined. Simultaneously the research procedure reveals some shortcomings. Thus the Rules of the Economic Procedure of Ukraine do not determine a distinct succession of the participants’ appearance in Court debates of a Court of original jurisdiction, and namely a succession of the participants’ appearance in Court should be determined by a Court. At the same time a lawmaker determines such succession during the court proceedings of a Court of appeal which complies with a sequence of the participants’ and their representatives’ speeches during appeal proceedings. Thus, it is worth determining an imperative succession of the parties’ speeches in Court of original jurisdiction. It is also worth saying that the court debates provide execution of two main foundations of the commercial court proceedings, that is a principle of competitiveness of the parties and court decree validity.