Leaving no room for doubt and exceptions: closing arguments through the lens of metadiscourse

Abstract

The closing argument in criminal trials allows for unique metadiscourse analysis opportunities. Yet despite these opportunities, it seems to be an understudied linguistic genre which requires more research into its interactional features. This article aims to explore the types, frequencies and functions of boosters as metadiscourse resources employed by defense attorneys to enter a plea of not guilty. In particular, the article describes how attorneys exploit boosters to produce convincing arguments and control the power relationship with an audience. The findings are based on a metadiscourse analysis of 21 closing arguments derived from the famous-trials.com website. As regards the choice of boosting resources to be searched in the corpus, the present study adopted Hyland and Zou’s (2021) taxonomy of boosters. It was revealed that defense attorneys made extensive use of boosters to exert an influence on the outcome of a criminal prosecution against their clients. The results have implications for our understanding of closing argument as a persuasive interactional legal genre and for teaching legal writing to law students. Hopefully, this study will spire lawyers to take advantage of boosters and other metadiscourse resources in their attempt to achieve persuasive goals in trials by jury.

Keywords

• courtroom discourse
• closing argument
• booster
• persuasion
• metadiscourse