Gbenga Ibileye

Department of English, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria Nigeria

7. spoken communication, pragmatics and comunicative dynamics

THE DISCOURSE STRUCTURE OF A RAPE TRIAL

Of all social machineries that directly affect the life of the society on a daily basis, the legal system is the most misunderstood. The misunderstanding, is believed (e.g., Goodrich 1987 and Ibileye 1994), stems not only because of the reservation of the knowledge of the law for a small class of highly trained professionals in the intricacies of law, but more importantly, because of the mystery which the operation of the law as represented by its language has raised. The language of law is seen by many as basically one that is meant to mystify and confuse. To communicate effectively in the legal context therefore, one has to be tutored in the very reserved language of the law. But an interesting thing about the language of the law is its hierarchy. Since the law itself exists within specific socio-political contexts, there is the institutionalisation of authority such that what the various participants can say is hierarchically marked. This paper examines this hierarchical structuring of language and especially how this hierarchy affects the outcome of verbal interaction in the context of the courtroom and outside it. In other words, the paper studies the discourse structure of courtroom exchanges with the goal of examining how institutional relationships among the various participants contribute to and shape the eventual outcome of the court interaction. The paper has as its data proceedings of a rape trial of a 76 year-old man who has been accused of raping an under-aged girl. The trial is at the Federal High Court of Justice, Zaria Nigeria. Our analysis, which uses the Gricean cooperative theory for its explication, shows that the super-structural context within which the court operates is crucial in determining the nature of verbal contributions by the respective participants; this also determines the eventual outcome of the entire court process. The study also demonstrates that the predictability of structure in the court exchange is functional because of the nature of logic which proceedings seek to establish in building up evidence and in reaching judgement in any particular case. Over all, our paper demonstrates that within the context of the court, not anyone can say anything to any reasonable consequence.