Polyphony and dialogism in legal discourse: focus on syntactic negation

This study draws on the notion of polyphony to discuss some inherent properties of discursive practices in the legal domain. In particular, it focuses on judgments, and analyses them as highly stratified argumentative texts in which judges construct their opinions and decisions making references to other authori-tative texts (precedents, statutes, etc.), and at the same time give account of the stances of the various parties involved (prosecu-tor, defence counsel, defendant, witnesses, experts, police inves-tigators, etc.). In this way they also respond to all possible objec-tions and anticipate counterarguments by incorporating them in their decisions (e.g. Amossy 2000; Mazzi 2007). The notion of polyphony (or dialogism) was originally intro-duced by Mikhail Bakhtin (1929/1984) with regard to the novel and later expanded to embrace other forms of linguistic commu-nication (Bakhtin 1981). It postulates the presence of different ‘voices’ in ‘speech utterances’ (in Bakhtin’s terminology), and was taken up and elaborated by various scholars in linguistics, and in particular Ducrot (1984), and later the Scandinavian ScaPoLine group (Nølke/Fløttum/Norėn 2004) and Bres and Nowakowska (Bres 1999; Bres/Nowakoska 2005). In this Chapter it will be shown that polyphony as the property of discourse to incorporate multiple layers of other discourses is especially relevant to judicial discourse, where it is realized by means of a range of different linguistic devices, some of which are evidently dialogic (cf. Fairclough's manifest intertextuality: 1992: 117-123; cf. also Martin/White 2005), while others are less manifestly so (Bres/Nowakoska 2005: 139). Taking as a starting point the examination of a corpus of Judg-ments issued by the UK Court of Appeal, the UK Supreme Court and the House of Lords, the presentation will identify and discuss some of the most noteworthy polyphonic devices de-ployed in them (e.g. concession, language reports irony, presup-position, comparison, rectification, etc.), examining their discur-sive function (cf. Garzone 2012; Garzone/Degano 2012). References Amossy, Ruth 2000. L’argumentation dans le discourse. Dis-cours politique, littérature d’idées, fiction. Paris: Nathan. Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1929/1984. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poet-ics. Edited and translated by Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Es-says, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Mi-chael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bres, Jacques 1999. “Vous les entendez?” Analyse du discourse et dialogisme. In Modèles linguisitques. 20, 71-86. Bres, Jacques / Nowakowska, Alexandra 2005. Dis moi avec qui tu ‘dialogues’, je te dirai qui tu est … De la pertinence de la notion de dialogisme pour l’analyse due discours. Mar-ges Linguistiques. 9, 137-153. Online at <www.marges-linguistiques.com>. Ducrot, Oswald 1984. Le dire et le dit. Paris: Les Éditions de Minut. Fairclough, Norman 1992. Discourse and Social Change. Ox-ford: Polity Press. Garzone, Giuliana 2012. Dialogism in Arbitration Awards: Fo-cus on Concessive Constructions. In Bhatia, Vijay / Gar-zone, Giuliana / Degano, Chiara (eds) Arbitration Awards: Generic Features and Textual Realisations. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 67-90. Garzone, Giuliana / Degano, Chiara 2012. Voices in arbitration awards: polyphony and language reports. In Bhatia V.K., Candlin C.N., Gotti M. (eds) Discourse and Practice in In-ternational Commercial Arbitration: Issues, challenges and prospects. London: Ashgate, 179-207. Martin, James R. / White, Peter R.R. 2005. The Language of Evaluation. Appraisal in English. London: Palgrave Mac-millan. Mazzi, Davide 2007. The Linguistic Study of Judicial Argumen-tation. Theoretical Perspectives Analytical Insights. Mode-na: Edizioni Il Fiorino. Nølke, Henning /Fløttum, Kjersti /Norén, Coco 2004. ScaPo-Line. La théorie Scandinave de la polyphonie linguistique. Paris: Editions Kimé.