Public Discourse on Criminal Responsibility and Its Impact on Political-Legal Decisions: Analysing the (Re-)Appropriation of the Language of Law in the Sarah Halimi Case

Abstract

This applied linguistics study on the lay discourse about legal language analyses online public reactions to a court decision in the Sarah Halimi case, a French Jewish woman killed by her neighbour in Paris in 2017. This study draws on discourse analysis with a focus on semantics analysis and dialogism theory to delve into how legal discourse is disseminated in forums and undergoes semantic redefinition through users’ language practices of legal notion in their own discourses. Thus, the aim of this study is not to develop linguistics theories but to use linguistics to explore the relationship between (1) the public representation and perception of this murder case in three forums and (2) the politico-legal response to decisions about a lack of criminal responsibility. The latter remains a sensitive topic in several countries, and several criminal justice reforms are revised or implemented with close observation of public reaction. This analysis highlights the linguistic markers revealing emotional discourse and a polymorphous expression of a lack of confidence in the justice system and legal actors, emphasising issues in comprehending justice and the work of psychiatrists and highlighting a gap between expectations and the actual delivery of justice. This study also shows that the linguistic strategies of non-experts are similar to those of legal experts.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9100313
Divisions: College of Business and Social Sciences > Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics
Additional Information: Copyright © 2024 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Uncontrolled Keywords: online discourses,criminal responsibility,penal populism,language and law,lay discourse,applied linguistics,dialogism,semantics
Publication ISSN: 2226-471X
Data Access Statement: No new data were created or analyzed in this study. Data sharing is not applicable to this article.
Last Modified: 22 Nov 2024 08:27
Date Deposited: 10 Oct 2024 16:58
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: https://www.mdp ... 6-471X/9/10/313 (Publisher URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2024-10
Published Online Date: 2024-09-27
Accepted Date: 2024-09-12
Authors: Makouar, Nadia (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-7288-6184)

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