With or without a purpose? Judges’ appraisal of offenders or their behaviour in six sentencing remarks

Xin Dai

doi:10.1515/text-2020-0228

Article

With or without a purpose? Judges’ appraisal of offenders or their behaviour in six sentencing remarks

Xin Dai
Xin Dai received her PhD from Cardiff University and is currently a lecturer at Southwest University of Political Science and Law in China. Her research interests include discourse analysis and forensic linguistics.

Published/Copyright: August 15, 2022

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From the journal Text & Talk Volume 43 Issue 4

Abstract

This study examines judges’ language use in sentencing remarks in the Crown Courts of England and Wales. Six sentencing remarks were selected from all those available on the UK judiciary website (by October 2016). The cases selected for closer analysis are as similar to each other as possible, so as to ensure that the differences in the discursive features of the sentencing remarks largely reflect the differences in judges’ sentencing practices. It is found that judges selectively use an appraisal strategy – using moralised purposes to invoke judgements of offenders or their behaviour – across the six sentencing remarks. Judges’ use (or non-use) of the appraisal strategy is found to be correlating with their sentencing decisions: i.e., judges opt for the appraisal strategy when their sentencing decisions are below or further above the starting point, but not when the decisions are just a few years above the starting point. The finding reveals that the statutory starting point exercises a binding effect on the judges’ sentencing practices despite the judges having the discretion to disregard the starting point. Such a finding not only provides an insight into the judges’ sentencing practices, but also demonstrates that appraisal analysis is an effective means to get access to sentencing, which seemed so inaccessible to academic research.

Keywords: appraisal analysis; audiences; England and Wales; murder; purpose of social practice; sentencing remarks; starting point

Corresponding author: Xin Dai, School of Foreign Languages, Southwest University of Political Science and Law, Chongqing, 401120, P. R. China, E-mail: daix3@foxmail.com

Funding source: Chongqing Municipal Education Commission http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100007957

Award Identifier / Grant number: 21SKGH016

Funding source: Southwest University of Political Science and Law

Award Identifier / Grant number: 2021XZNDYB-07

About the author

Xin Dai

Xin Dai received her PhD from Cardiff University and is currently a lecturer at Southwest University of Political Science and Law in China. Her research interests include discourse analysis and forensic linguistics.

Research funding: The project is funded by Chongqing Municipal Education Commission (21SKGH016) and Southwest University of Political Science and Law (2021XZNDYB-07).

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Received: 2020-12-25

Accepted: 2022-07-26

Published Online: 2022-08-15

Published in Print: 2023-07-26

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2020-0228

Keywords for this article

appraisal analysis; audiences; England and Wales; murder; purpose of social practice; sentencing remarks; starting point