Home Linguistics & Semiotics Chapter 7 Identity construction in complainants’ narratives in the investigative public hearings on the Nigerian Federal Capital Territory administration
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Chapter 7 Identity construction in complainants’ narratives in the investigative public hearings on the Nigerian Federal Capital Territory administration

  • Foluke Olayinka Unuabonah
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More than (Just) Words
This chapter is in the book More than (Just) Words

Abstract

This study explores identity construction in complainants’ narratives in the investigative public hearings on the Nigerian Federal Capital Territory administration, with a view to revealing the discursive processes involved in constructing different kinds of identities in the hearings. The data comprise thirty-one purposively selected complainants’ oral testimonies, which were obtained from the African Independent Television station in Nigeria. The data are analysed qualitatively, using insights from the communicative theory of identity and the sociocultural linguistic approach to identity. The study shows how complainants construct different personal, enacted, relational, and collective identities, some of which emerge during the hearings. The complainants construct these identities through linguistic and discursive processes such as labels, styles, categorisation as well as emotive, attitudinal, and epistemic stance marking in order to obtain favourable recommendations from the hearing panel.

Abstract

This study explores identity construction in complainants’ narratives in the investigative public hearings on the Nigerian Federal Capital Territory administration, with a view to revealing the discursive processes involved in constructing different kinds of identities in the hearings. The data comprise thirty-one purposively selected complainants’ oral testimonies, which were obtained from the African Independent Television station in Nigeria. The data are analysed qualitatively, using insights from the communicative theory of identity and the sociocultural linguistic approach to identity. The study shows how complainants construct different personal, enacted, relational, and collective identities, some of which emerge during the hearings. The complainants construct these identities through linguistic and discursive processes such as labels, styles, categorisation as well as emotive, attitudinal, and epistemic stance marking in order to obtain favourable recommendations from the hearing panel.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Acknowledgments VII
  3. Contents IX
  4. Foreword XIII
  5. Introduction: More than (just) words 1
  6. Part I: (Just) words
  7. Legal perspectives
  8. Chapter 1 Metalanguage in the penalty phase of a capital trial: A study of two monologic genres 27
  9. Chapter 2 Political discrimination or reasonable conduct? Motive-implicative discourse moves in a civil trial’s closing arguments 49
  10. Chapter 3 Legal-lay interaction and recontextualization in Swedish criminal proceedings 73
  11. Non-legal perspectives
  12. Chapter 4 . . .and I’m telling you honestly, I don’t measure: Emotive reframing and evasiveness in expert testimony 99
  13. Chapter 5 Navigating the linguistic complexity of cross-examination: The role of the witness intermediary for an autistic defendant 127
  14. Chapter 6 Between semantics and pragmatics: Witnesses’ credibility and the linguistic expression of the source of information in Italian criminal trials 149
  15. Chapter 7 Identity construction in complainants’ narratives in the investigative public hearings on the Nigerian Federal Capital Territory administration 185
  16. Part II: More than (just) words
  17. Speech and gesture
  18. Chapter 8 I wanna be somebody: Enacted reported thought in an actual jury deliberation 213
  19. Chapter 9 Multimodal discursive authority of the judge: Analyzing the judge’s interactions with courtroom participants in Chinese criminal trials 231
  20. Image and architecture
  21. Chapter 10 Allegories of justice in contemporary France: In search of a new paradigm 267
  22. 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
  23. Index 319
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111431789-008

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Acknowledgments VII
  3. Contents IX
  4. Foreword XIII
  5. Introduction: More than (just) words 1
  6. Part I: (Just) words
  7. Legal perspectives
  8. Chapter 1 Metalanguage in the penalty phase of a capital trial: A study of two monologic genres 27
  9. Chapter 2 Political discrimination or reasonable conduct? Motive-implicative discourse moves in a civil trial’s closing arguments 49
  10. Chapter 3 Legal-lay interaction and recontextualization in Swedish criminal proceedings 73
  11. Non-legal perspectives
  12. Chapter 4 . . .and I’m telling you honestly, I don’t measure: Emotive reframing and evasiveness in expert testimony 99
  13. Chapter 5 Navigating the linguistic complexity of cross-examination: The role of the witness intermediary for an autistic defendant 127
  14. Chapter 6 Between semantics and pragmatics: Witnesses’ credibility and the linguistic expression of the source of information in Italian criminal trials 149
  15. Chapter 7 Identity construction in complainants’ narratives in the investigative public hearings on the Nigerian Federal Capital Territory administration 185
  16. Part II: More than (just) words
  17. Speech and gesture
  18. Chapter 8 I wanna be somebody: Enacted reported thought in an actual jury deliberation 213
  19. Chapter 9 Multimodal discursive authority of the judge: Analyzing the judge’s interactions with courtroom participants in Chinese criminal trials 231
  20. Image and architecture
  21. Chapter 10 Allegories of justice in contemporary France: In search of a new paradigm 267
  22. 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
  23. Index 319
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