Chapter 2 Political discrimination or reasonable conduct? Motive-implicative discourse moves in a civil trial’s closing arguments
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Karen Tracy
Abstract
This chapter describes three sets of motive-implicative discourse moves used by plaintiff and defense attorneys in their closing arguments in a jury trial about political discrimination. Occurring in a federal court in the United States, the case Wagner v. Jones et al involved a charge of political discrimination brought by a faculty job candidate against a dean of a public university’s law school. The suit arose because the candidate was not offered the position after her job talk. She alleged that she met the job description well, but she was denied the position because the law school was liberally biased, and she was a conservative. After reviewing past research on language and discourse features that implicate motive in criminal trials, the chapter describes civil trials, closing arguments, and the data. Then three sets of motive-implicative discourse moves are identified and illustrated. These sets include (1) using or avoiding specific terms, (2) normalizing the hiring process or expressing skepticism about it, and (3) stylistic features of money talk. The conclusion reflects about differences in language use in civil and criminal trials and the unique place of political discrimination suits in the United States.
Abstract
This chapter describes three sets of motive-implicative discourse moves used by plaintiff and defense attorneys in their closing arguments in a jury trial about political discrimination. Occurring in a federal court in the United States, the case Wagner v. Jones et al involved a charge of political discrimination brought by a faculty job candidate against a dean of a public university’s law school. The suit arose because the candidate was not offered the position after her job talk. She alleged that she met the job description well, but she was denied the position because the law school was liberally biased, and she was a conservative. After reviewing past research on language and discourse features that implicate motive in criminal trials, the chapter describes civil trials, closing arguments, and the data. Then three sets of motive-implicative discourse moves are identified and illustrated. These sets include (1) using or avoiding specific terms, (2) normalizing the hiring process or expressing skepticism about it, and (3) stylistic features of money talk. The conclusion reflects about differences in language use in civil and criminal trials and the unique place of political discrimination suits in the United States.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Acknowledgments VII
- Contents IX
- Foreword XIII
- Introduction: More than (just) words 1
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Part I: (Just) words
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Legal perspectives
- Chapter 1 Metalanguage in the penalty phase of a capital trial: A study of two monologic genres 27
- Chapter 2 Political discrimination or reasonable conduct? Motive-implicative discourse moves in a civil trial’s closing arguments 49
- Chapter 3 Legal-lay interaction and recontextualization in Swedish criminal proceedings 73
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Non-legal perspectives
- Chapter 4 . . .and I’m telling you honestly, I don’t measure: Emotive reframing and evasiveness in expert testimony 99
- Chapter 5 Navigating the linguistic complexity of cross-examination: The role of the witness intermediary for an autistic defendant 127
- Chapter 6 Between semantics and pragmatics: Witnesses’ credibility and the linguistic expression of the source of information in Italian criminal trials 149
- Chapter 7 Identity construction in complainants’ narratives in the investigative public hearings on the Nigerian Federal Capital Territory administration 185
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Part II: More than (just) words
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Speech and gesture
- Chapter 8 I wanna be somebody: Enacted reported thought in an actual jury deliberation 213
- Chapter 9 Multimodal discursive authority of the judge: Analyzing the judge’s interactions with courtroom participants in Chinese criminal trials 231
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Image and architecture
- Chapter 10 Allegories of justice in contemporary France: In search of a new paradigm 267
- Chapter 11 Criminal law, court architecture, and the space of justice: Stakeholder perceptions of ‘special’ courts used in child sexual abuse trials in India 293
- Index 319
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Acknowledgments VII
- Contents IX
- Foreword XIII
- Introduction: More than (just) words 1
-
Part I: (Just) words
-
Legal perspectives
- Chapter 1 Metalanguage in the penalty phase of a capital trial: A study of two monologic genres 27
- Chapter 2 Political discrimination or reasonable conduct? Motive-implicative discourse moves in a civil trial’s closing arguments 49
- Chapter 3 Legal-lay interaction and recontextualization in Swedish criminal proceedings 73
-
Non-legal perspectives
- Chapter 4 . . .and I’m telling you honestly, I don’t measure: Emotive reframing and evasiveness in expert testimony 99
- Chapter 5 Navigating the linguistic complexity of cross-examination: The role of the witness intermediary for an autistic defendant 127
- Chapter 6 Between semantics and pragmatics: Witnesses’ credibility and the linguistic expression of the source of information in Italian criminal trials 149
- Chapter 7 Identity construction in complainants’ narratives in the investigative public hearings on the Nigerian Federal Capital Territory administration 185
-
Part II: More than (just) words
-
Speech and gesture
- Chapter 8 I wanna be somebody: Enacted reported thought in an actual jury deliberation 213
- Chapter 9 Multimodal discursive authority of the judge: Analyzing the judge’s interactions with courtroom participants in Chinese criminal trials 231
-
Image and architecture
- Chapter 10 Allegories of justice in contemporary France: In search of a new paradigm 267
- Chapter 11 Criminal law, court architecture, and the space of justice: Stakeholder perceptions of ‘special’ courts used in child sexual abuse trials in India 293
- Index 319
