تحلیل مکالمات دادگاه بر مبنای نشانگر‌های کاربردشناختی ادب و بی‌ادبی

Abstract
Along with the progress of the judicial system, the language of the court and the way of speaking in legal contexts have also been accompanied by changes and developments. This new linguistic field provides a valuable platform for examining linguistic theories and their adaptability in the field of law. In this regard, this article aims to compare the politeness and impoliteness markers of Brown and Levinson (1987) and Culpepper (1996) theories in the conversations of judges and defendants and determines the appearance of these markers and degree of following and violating regarding these variables by these two judicial groups. For this purpose, 15 video files related to the public sessions of the Iranian criminal courts were taken from the Aparat website as a available sampling, and after transcription, they were subjected to quantitative and qualitative analysis. The results of descriptive and inferential statistics show that judges and defendants have the highest frequency in the "observing of social distance" marker in the formation of polite words. Also, regarding the violation of the principles of politeness, it was found that the marker of "non-observing of negative politeness" had the highest frequency in the conversations of the judges, and the marker of "non-observing of power relations" had the highest frequency in the words of the defendants. In addition, the results show that the judges have a significant difference with the defendants in respect of other markers, except for the "observing of positive politeness" marker. The defendants also have significant differences with the judges in violating all the markers. The reason why most judges adhere to the principle of politeness can be related to the issue of keeping face and power.
Keywords: Conversation Analysis, Impoliteness, Marker, Politeness, Pragmatics
1. Introduction
"Conversation analysis", is an approach to discourse analysis which is used in the study of official and organizational conversations, including court conversations. The conversation analysis approach in the court context provides a significant contribution to the empirical analysis of pragmatic concepts in this type of interaction. One of the issues that always arises in the context of the court is the observance of politeness in the conversations of its participants. In recent years, the phenomenon of politeness has attracted the attention of theorists across a wide range of social sciences, and various opinions have been expressed about it. In order to create an appropriate analytical approach, this study attempts to formulate markers of compliance and violation of politeness principles in terms of social norms of court language based on the theories of Brown and Levinson (1987) and Culpepper (1996). Accordingly, the present study seeks to answer these two questions:
1. How are the pragmatic categories of politeness and impoliteness represented in courtroom conversations?
2. What is the difference between judges and defendants in terms of observing and not observing the principles of politeness?
2. Literature Review
Razavian and Jalili Doab (2017), Dowlatabadi, Mehri, and Tajabadi (2014), Baghbani and Karampour (2017), Liao (2019), Ardi, Mangsor, Mansoor, and Ahmad (2021) as well as Grainger (2018) have attempted to examine from a different angle, the concepts of politeness theory of Brown and Levinson (1987) and Culpepper (1996) in the context of the court and its participants, and have achieved some results. For instance, in their study, Razavian and Jalili Doab analyzed the linguistic characteristics of defendants in two fraud cases within the Semnan Province judicial system, covering stages ranging from initial interrogation to the preliminary investigation and the trial. One of the findings of their research indicates that adherence to the principle of politeness is a fundamental and constant element of the speech of this group of offenders. In fact, those accused of fraud cannot achieve their desired outcome—namely, deceiving people and exploiting their assets—without observing this principle. By adhering to the principle of politeness and offering hope to complainants, these offenders seek to deceive them while simultaneously persuading the interrogator and the judge; for a polite demeanor tends to shield an individual from suspicion. Consequently, observing this principle can positively influence the audience's perception of the speaker and, in turn, sway the outcome of verbal interactions—such as interrogations and court proceedings—in the defendant's favor. Moreover, possessing background knowledge of the power structure within judicial bodies, these individuals are well-versed in the proper conduct; consequently, they speak respectfully to judicial officials, exchange pleasantries with complainants, articulate their points firmly and confidently, and employ plural pronouns and verb forms in their speech.These two researchers believe that a fraudster employs language as a tool in the course of committing the crime; consequently, depending on the type of fraud, the individual must possess a command of certain linguistic and non-linguistic structures. Based on the physical and discursive context, the fraudster selects specific tools from a range of linguistic options and employs them to mount a favorable defense against judicial authorities and the victims of the fraud.
As is evident from this study and its results, the previous researchers have not simultaneously examined markers of politeness and impoliteness in the conversations between judges and defendants. On the other hand, the clarification of conversations between high-ranking defendants and judges from the perspective of the theory of politeness and impoliteness in the broad context of the Iranian criminal courts, which is the focus of this research, has received less attention.
3. Methodology
The present study aims to explore the conversations between judges and defendants in Iranian trial courts from the perspective of language pragmatics in a descriptive (calculation of the frequency and percentage of markers stated by judges and defendants) and inferential (comparative calculation of conversations between judges and defendants using the Chi-square test) study, using a combined quantitative and qualitative method. The corpus of this research consists of fifteen video files related to Iranian criminal court sessions on various topics which were taken from the Aparat website using a convenience sampling method. After transcription of the conversations, 1820 sentences related to judges and 2050 sentences related to defendants were analyzed in terms of Brown and Levinson (1987) and Culpepper (1996) markers. This analysis was conducted based on the research method of Schutzler and Schlotter (2022) and according to the data obtained in legal linguistics between judge and defendant. In order to ensure the validity of the research, twenty percent of the data were reviewed by two researchers and through Pearson's correlation using SPSS software, version 24, a validity coefficient of (0.84) was obtained. In other words, agreement was reached in 84 percent of the analytical cases. In the descriptive statistics, a difference of at least twenty percent in the frequency of markers of the researched categories between the judge and the defendant was considered a “significant difference” (Scherer, 2013). In this regard, if the difference was between five and twenty percent, it was considered as a "moderate difference" and if this difference was less than five percent, it was considered as a "close difference." In calculating inferential statistics and the chi-square test, if the "P-value" was less than 0.05, it was considered as a significant difference in the use of the category in question between the two groups of judges and defendants.
4. Results
Table 4.1:
Categories of Politeness and Impoliteness





politeness


marker


Observing social distance


Observing power relations


Observing positive politeness


Observing negative politeness


total




judge


399


375


18


237


1029




percentage


66.5


65.78


27.27


65.28


64.35




defendant


201


195


48


126


570




percentage


33.5


34.21


72.72


34.71


35.64




impoliteness


marker


Non-observing social distance


Non-observing power relations


Non- observing positive politeness


Non-observing negative politeness


total




judge


15


42


81


90


228




percentage


5.26


13.33


36


32.6


20.70




defendant


270


273


144


186


873




percentage


94.73


86.66


64


67.39


79.29







Figure 4.1:
Comparison of the Percentage of Politeness Markers in Court Conversations Between the Judge and the Defendant

Table 4.2:
Hypothesis Test of Politeness Category in Conversation




marker


judge


defendant


chi-square (X2)


degree of freedom


P-value




Observing social distance


399


201


41.42


3


0.001




Observing power relations


375


195













Observing positive politeness


18


48













Observing negative politeness


237


126













total


1029


570













Figure 4.2:
The extent of politeness in conversations between judges and defendants

Figure 4.3:
Comparison of the percentage of impoliteness markers in court conversations between the judge and the defendant

Table 4.3:
Hypothesis test of impoliteness category in conversation




marker


judge


defendant


chi-square (X2)


degree of freedom


P-value




Non-observing social distance


15


270


107.69


3


0.001




Non-observing power relations


42


273













Non-observing positive politeness


81


144













Non-observing negative politeness


90


186













total


228


873













Figure 4.4:
The extent of impoliteness in conversations between judges and defendants

5. Discussion
The statistics obtained from the descriptive and inferential analysis of politeness markers (Brown & Levinson, 1987) in this study shows that judges prioritize the markers of "observing social distance," "observing power relations," "observing negative politeness," and "observing positive politeness," respectively, and except for the marker of "observing positive politeness," they have a significant difference with defendants in observing other markers. In this regard, defendants also make an effort to maintain the issue of politeness in the same order of components. Also, regarding the issue of impoliteness in court discourse from the perspective of Culpepper (1996), the statistics shows that defendants, in significant contrast to judges, engage in norm-breaking behaviors and speech by applying the markers of "non-observing power relations", "non-observing social distance", "non-observing negative politeness" and "non-observing positive politeness". In this regard, judges also, to a less extent, and by applying the markers of "non-observing negative politeness", "non-observing positive politeness", "non-observing power relations", and "non-observing social distance", cause the formation of unkind and unfamiliar behaviors.
6. Conclusion
The results show that both judges and defendants have the highest frequency in the following of "observing social distance" marker in the formation of polite words. Also, regarding the issue of impoliteness, it was found that the marker of "non-observing negative politeness" had the highest frequency in the conversations of the judges, and the marker of "non-observing power relations" had the highest frequency in the words of the defendants. Results reveal that judges pay more attention to observing the issue of politeness than defendants. Although the judges have also shown a small level of impoliteness, this inappropriate behavior has never been condemned. Therefore, it can be said that the criterion of whether or not words are polite is an issue that has been intertwined with the issue of power in legal discourse. The main reason for the results of this research may lie in the experience of judges, their knowledge of the court, and their awareness of procedural laws. The issue that arises in the end is the applicability of the theories under study in the court context.
Bibliography
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