Narrative navigation in legal persuasion: a rhetorical analysis of lawyers’ affidavits and skeleton arguments for appellate relief in criminal cases in Malawi
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Wellman Kondowe
Wellman Kondowe is a senior lecturer in the Department of Language, Cultural and Creative Studies at Mzuzu University in Malawi. He holds a Master’s Degree (2014) and a PhD in Applied Linguistics (2020) from Central China Normal University. His research interests include language and law, political discourse analysis, and applied language studies. His recent publications appear in TEXT & TALK and book chapters in
Language and the Law: Perspectives in Forensic Linguistics from Africa and Beyond (2022, Sun Press, Stellenbosch) andLanguage, Crime and the Courts in Southern Africa and Beyond (2023, Sun Press, Stellenbosch). He has published an edited book titledMultilingualism in Southern Africa (Routledge, 2024) and his forthcoming book titledDiscrimination and Access to Justice in Africa is already on Routledge website.
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Dorothy nyaKaunda Kamanga
Dorothy nyaKaunda Kamanga holds a Masters of Law and Masters of Arts from University of Cape Town and Rutgers University, respectively. She obtained her Bachelor of Law (Honours) from University of Malawi. She currently serves in the Malawi Judiciary as a Justice of Appeal and is a PhD candidate at UCT. She also lectures in criminal litigation at the Malawi Institute of Legal Education. Her publications include ‘Dispossessing the widow: Gender-based violence in Malawi’ (2002) and a book chapter titled ‘The role of the judiciary in safeguarding and ensuring access to criminal justice during the pretrial stage’ (2016).
Abstract
Narrative navigation and lawyers’ use of linguistic persuasion in affidavits and skeleton arguments for appellant relief in criminal cases remains one of the under-researched areas in the field of language and law. This is a phase at which lawyers have the opportunity to influence the judicial decision-making process through their ability to persuade the appellate judge to believe their version of the case to be the true version. The argument chosen by the lawyer and the manner of telling it are inseparable. By utilising data from ten appellate level criminal cases from the High Court of Malawi, this study investigates the narrative structure of lawyers’ affidavits and skeleton arguments using Aristotle’s rhetorical analysis framework. Our findings reveal that the appeal to logos is simply a templatic genre structure that lawyers are meant to follow. However, lawyers’ appeals to ethos and pathos reveal excessive redundancy and low deployment of important linguistic resources that can help them be appropriately persuasive, which can be acceptable to the wider discourse community.
About the authors
Wellman Kondowe is a senior lecturer in the Department of Language, Cultural and Creative Studies at Mzuzu University in Malawi. He holds a Master’s Degree (2014) and a PhD in Applied Linguistics (2020) from Central China Normal University. His research interests include language and law, political discourse analysis, and applied language studies. His recent publications appear in TEXT & TALK and book chapters in Language and the Law: Perspectives in Forensic Linguistics from Africa and Beyond (2022, Sun Press, Stellenbosch) and Language, Crime and the Courts in Southern Africa and Beyond (2023, Sun Press, Stellenbosch). He has published an edited book titled Multilingualism in Southern Africa (Routledge, 2024) and his forthcoming book titled Discrimination and Access to Justice in Africa is already on Routledge website.
Dorothy nyaKaunda Kamanga holds a Masters of Law and Masters of Arts from University of Cape Town and Rutgers University, respectively. She obtained her Bachelor of Law (Honours) from University of Malawi. She currently serves in the Malawi Judiciary as a Justice of Appeal and is a PhD candidate at UCT. She also lectures in criminal litigation at the Malawi Institute of Legal Education. Her publications include ‘Dispossessing the widow: Gender-based violence in Malawi’ (2002) and a book chapter titled ‘The role of the judiciary in safeguarding and ensuring access to criminal justice during the pretrial stage’ (2016).
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