Dueling Discourses: The Construction of Reality in Closing Arguments

249 Pages·2015·1.7 MB·English

by  Laura Felton Rosulek

Dueling Discourses
OXFORD STUDIES IN LANGUAGE AND LAW
Oxford Studies in Language and Law includes scholarly analyses and descriptions
of language evidence in civil and criminal law cases as well as language issues aris-
ing in the area of statutes, statutory interpretation, courtroom discourse, jury in-
structions, and historical changes in legal language.
Series Editor:
Roger W. Shuy, Georgetown University
Editorial Board:
Janet Ainsworth, Seattle University School of Law
Janet Cotterill, Cardiff University, UK
Christopher Heffer, Cardiff University, UK
Robert Leonard, Hofstra University
Anne Lise Kjær, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Gregory Matoesian, University of Illinois at Chicago
Elizabeth Mertz, University of Wisconsin Law School and American Bar Foundation
Lawrence Solan, Brooklyn Law School
Peter Tiersma, Loyola Law School
M. Teresa Turell, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona
The Legal Language of Scottish Burghs: Standardization and Lexical Bundles (1380–1560)
Joanna Kopaczyk
“I’m Sorry for What I’ve Done”: The Language of Courtroom Apologies
M. Catherine Gruber
Dueling Discourses: The Construction of Reality in Closing Arguments
Laura Felton Rosulek
Dueling Discourses
THE CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY
IN CLOSING ARGUMENTS
Laura Felton Rosulek
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Felton Rosulek, Laura, author.
Dueling discourses : the construction of reality in closing arguments /
Laura Felton Rosulek.
p. cm.
ISBN 978–0–19–933761–3 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–19–933762–0 (ebook)
1. Summation (Law)—United States. 2. Forensic oratory. 3. Trial practice—United States.
I. Title.
KF8924.F45 2015
345.73’075—dc23
2014018517
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
For my girls - Sylvia and Caroline

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Chapter 1 Introduction 1
1. The Reasons to Study Closing Arguments 2
2. An Overview of Closing Arguments 4
3. The Details of the Study Presented in This Book 8
4. The Findings in This Book Compared to Previous Understandings 13
5. Outline of the Remainder of the Book 18
Chapter 2 The Theoretical Framework 20
1. Critical Discourse Analysis 20
2. Systemic Functional Linguistics 21
3. Discourses and Texts 22
4. Functions of Discourses 24
5. Discourse as a Reconstruction of Reality 28
6. Discourse as Constructions of a Social World 31
7. The Factors Shaping Discourses 36
8. Silencing, De-Emphasizing, and Emphasizing as Discursive Means for
Representing Reality and Constructing Social Worlds 40
Chapter 3 The Defendants 51
1. Frequency of Reference 52
2. Terms of Reference 56
3. The Roles of the Defendants in Clauses 75
4. Discussion 105
Chapter 4 The Victims 107
1. Frequency of Reference 108
2. Terms of Reference 112
3. The Roles of the Victims in Clauses 124
4. Discussion 152
Chapter 5 The Jurors 154
1. The Theoretical Framework 155
2. Methodology 156
3. Results 157
4. Conclusions 170
viii Contents
Chapter 6 The Lawyers 172
1. The Representation of the Opposition 173
2. Lawyers’ Constructions of Themselves 181
3. Conclusions 187
Chapter 7 The Big Picture 189
1. Generalizability of the Results 191
2. Silencing, De-Emphasizing, and Emphasizing to Explain Previous
Findings on Courtroom Discourse 201
3. Silencing, De-Emphasizing, and Emphasizing across Genres 202
4. Final Thoughts 208
Notes 209
Bibliography 217
Index 233
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First of all, thank you to Roger Shuy for believing in this project and encour-
aging me to write this book. I am so grateful for your confidence in me.
Second, thank you to Rakesh Bhatt for all of your guidance over the
years and all of the time and energy you put into helping me develop this
research. An additional thank you goes to all of the sociolinguists at the Uni-
versity of Illinois for helping me think about the data in new ways, reading
the early drafts of these chapters, and generally being there to support me.
Third, thank you to the linguists at the University of Montana for wel-
coming me while I worked on this book and for giving me an outlet to express
my fascination with language.
Fourth, thank you so much to my family and friends—especially Mike,
Sylvia, and Caroline. I couldn’t have done this without you!
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