A DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF UTTERANCES IN SELECTED CRIMINAL CASES IN IJEBU-ODE MAGISTRATE COURTS: THE PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

Abstract

This research was carried out to investigate language use in the court of law and how it is
distinguished from other forms of language use. It also considered the perlocutionary effects of the
uttered statements on the listeners, that is, how the utterances affected and influenced the listeners'
responses and reactions. Grice Pragmatic Maxims and J.L Austin Speech Acts Theory were adopted to
analyse the courtroom discourse. The pedagogical implication of this research was that it is useful for
teaching and learning of English for specific and/or for special purposes. Discourse Analysis is a very
powerful tool for interpreting language use and it has much to do with utterances and interpretations.
The major research approach was non-participatory observation. The researchers attended several
Ijebu-Ode Magistrate court sessions to listen to some court proceedings on criminal cases. Simple
random sampling was adopted to select the criminal cases to collate and anaslyse. Data were
collected through a play-recorder placed at a strategic place in each courtroom to collect the
utterances, which was later played back several times in order to analyse the collected data. Findings
revealed that certain precautions are taken in the c o u r t r o o m s t o a v o i d m i s c o m m u n i c a t i o n a n d
misinterpretation. This study recommends that all interlocutors in the courtroom proceedings should
endeavour to use correct and unambiguous sentences. It is also recommended that English for
Specific/ Special Purposes be an integral part the of B.A and BAED English programme curriculum.