Lawyers’ metapragmatic expressions in the opening speech of Anglo-American criminal trials

Abstract

This study explores lawyers’ linguistic traces of metapragmatic awareness as manifested in the opening speech of Anglo-American criminal trials, with a view to investigating the forms, functions, and distribution of explicit metapragmatics. Based on transcript data from five criminal trials, six groups of metapragmatic expressions are identified: verbal act descriptions, epistemic and evidential adjusters, message glosses, speech commentaries, talk about interactional norms, and talk about language use. Quantitative results indicate a unique distribution pattern, attributable to the discursive constraints associated with institutional norms and, to a lesser extent, to the presenter's immediate communicative needs. The study reveals that while evidence and facts are the primary objects of dispute in the courtroom, pragmatic issues also often become objects of talk and, at times, are subject to being challenged. These metapragmatic utterances serve to enhance the lawyers’ propositional content and boost their credibility in various ways and can conceal the argumentative force of a lawyer's statements, thereby mediating the interpretation of the facts and the import of evidence.