The pragmatics of metapragmatics in death trials

Abstract

Underpinned by the assumption that every message embodies an interplay between what is said and how it is meant to be interpreted (Bateson, 1972), this study explores metapragmatic awareness in capital lawyers’ closing speech. Based on five American trials, the analysis identifies common types of metapragmatic expressions and explicates how they contribute to negotiating the desired sentence choice and how such expressions are motivated by the speaker's ideological positioning and specific communicative needs in the emergent interaction. It is argued that metapragmatic expressions constitute key resources that enable lawyers to invoke the import of facts and law and render them consequential in the first place and at times convey equivocal messages about how to understand death penalty and impose death. In this way, they are as critical as the strategic selection of lexico-grammatical resources for the construction of reality in the courtroom.