Chaemsaithong2024

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Chaemsaithong2024
BibType ARTICLE
Key Chaemsaithong2024
Author(s) Krisda Chaemsaithong
Title Membership categorization devices in courtroom opening and closing speeches
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Impression management, Courtroom narrative, Opening, Closing, Membership Categorization Analysis
Publisher
Year 2024
Language English
City
Month
Journal Social Semiotics
Volume 21
Number 4
Pages 375-401
URL Link
DOI 10.1080/10350330.2023.2184683
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

Through the lens of Membership Categorization Analysis, this study explicates the process of discursive categorization in courtroom opening and closing statements, focusing on the use of mundane categories as well as associated activities to negotiate the legal facticity of a criminal offense. Based on the official transcripts of a high-profile Anglo-American trial, the study reveals that much of what constitutes the opening and closing is the dispute over the categorization of the main characters in legal narratives, which at times provides conflicting information to fact-finders. The two sides are found to deploy explicit and implicit categorizations. However, instead of using oppositional categories, the two sides commonly make use of different membership categorization devices. This alternation of devices supplants and replaces each other, so that two versions of realities are discursively constructed. Such strategic categorization enables lawyers to go beyond offering a road map of the case in the opening and emphasizing key evidence in the closing: everyday categories smuggle in moral evaluation and make an emotional appeal to the jurors, which in principle are legally prohibited.

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