Speech Impact in Judicial Dialogues (Based on the Lawyer Perry Mason’s Speeches in the Novels of E.S. Gardner)

The article considers strategies of speech impact in judicial dialogues as a specific form of institutional communication. The analysis focuses on the legal discourse, where the lawyer’s speech is subject both to legal norms and to persuasive strategies. Special attention is paid to cross-examination as a dialogue genre in which the positions of prosecution and defense collide. The research is based on the trial speeches of Perry Mason, the fictional lawyer created by E.S. Gardner. The analysis makes it possible to identify patterns of rational and emotional influence, as well as tactics of logical pressure, statements of leading and confirming questions, and appeals to contradictions in testimonies. A detailed description of the communicative situation in a court session allows for the analysis of its verbal and non-verbal components. It is shown that judicial dialogues represent a multi-level polylogue, including the basic level of dialogue between a lawyer/prosecutor and a witness on the fact of a crime and a meta-level at which the judge and other participants in the meeting (including jury and audience) are involved, and the subject of discussion is the basic dialogue. Judicial dialogues demonstrate complex strategies of argumentation and speech influence in legal communication. Given the limited public availability of courtroom data, descriptions of court proceedings in fiction can provide valuable insights for analyzing judicial discourse

Adversarial system · Argumentation theory · Expert witness · Judicial opinion · Jury · Speech act · Witness · Discourse Analysis and Cultural Communication · Language, Communication, and Linguistic Studies · Legal Language and Interpretation