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Title: | The sociolinguistic construction of reality in the closing arguments of criminal trials |
Author(s): | Rosulek, Laura Felton |
Director of Research: | Bhatt, Rakesh M. |
Doctoral Committee Chair(s): | Bhatt, Rakesh M. |
Doctoral Committee Member(s): | Kibbee, Douglas A.; Koven, Michele; Terkourafi, Marina |
Department / Program: | Linguistics Linguistics |
Degree Granting Institution: | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign |
Genre: | Dissertation Ph.D. |
Subject(s): | Linguistics
Critical discourse analysis Systemic functional linguistics Linguistic anthropology Closing arguments |
Abstract: | This dissertation is a critical analysis of the sociolinguistic choices lawyers make in the closing arguments of criminal trials to construct opposing representations of the same people and events. I analyzed the closing arguments of seventeen felony trials using both quantitative and qualitative methodologies and the insights of Critical Discourse Analysis, Systemic Functional Linguistics, and Linguistic Anthropology. Based on the results of four analyses, I argue that opposing lawyers use their linguistic and discursive choices contrastively to silence, background, and foreground different information. |
Issue Date: | 2009 |
Type: | Text |
Language: | English |
URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/2142/48993 |
Rights Information: | Copyright 2009 Laura Felton Rosulek |
Date Available in IDEALS: | 2014-05-06 |
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
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Dissertations and Theses - Linguistics
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Graduate Dissertations and Theses at Illinois
Graduate Theses and Dissertations at Illinois