Analyzing Discoursal Style of Judges and Defendants in Courtroom Based on Forensic Linguistics

Forensic linguistics as a branch of applied linguistics has taken place in the analysis of court discourse in the world, and newly, in the Iranian court contexts. This discipline has helped the legal language to analyze discoursal elements among the court participants. This is a mixed-methods research through which qualitative and quantitative analyses have been followed. The research was to discover pragmatic aspects of court discourse. One of these aspects was the spoken style markers (McMenamin, 2004) used by judges and defendants in Iranian criminal courts. Data were analyzed through descriptive (i.e., frequency, means, and percentages) and inferential statistics (i.e., Chi-square, X2) to compare judges' and defendants' conversations. Analysis of the “spoken style” variable showed that defendants' and judges' spoken styles differed significantly. The judges use the “use of formal spoken style” discourse markers more than the defendants. In sum, results revealed that judges and defendants used each discourse marker differently to play a role in strengthening or weakening speakers' power. Implications of the study suggest several guidelines for training judges in pre-service and in-service courses that provide them with linguistic and discoursal knowledge of how to use language pragmatically and practically to smooth the court processes.