| Title |
Hedging in the majority and dissenting opinions of the european court of human rights and the supreme court of the united states / |
| Translation of Title |
Apsidraudimai Europos Žmogaus Teisių Teismo ir Jungtinių Valstijų Aukščiausiojo Teismo teisėjų daugumos ir atskirosiose nuomonėse. |
| Authors |
Mikutavičius, Darius |
| Full Text |
|
| Pages |
45 |
| Keywords [eng] |
hedging, dissenting opinions, majority opinions, apsidraudimai, legal discourse |
| Abstract [eng] |
Hedging can play an important role in conveying nuanced language, and this feature of hedges seems to be of particular importance in legal discourse. This study aims to describe and compare the use of epistemic lexical verbs as hedging devices in two written genres produced at two well-known courts; namely, the majority and dissenting opinions of the European Court of Human Rights and the Supreme Court of the United States. The corpus used in this study consists of two sets of 10 majority opinions and two sets of 10 dissenting opinions produced at the two courts, 40 judicial opinions in total. Lexical realization, frequency and function of speculative, deductive, quotative and sensorial lexical verb hedges were compared. Results show that certain specific patterns of use of lexical verb hedges can be determined in both the majority as well as the dissenting opinions. Qualitative analysis demonstrates how particular patters of hedging may be linked to differing communicative purposes in judicial opinions. Future studies may analyse hedging patterns in the judicial opinions produced at other courts of law and compare them to the findings of this study. |
| Dissertation Institution |
Vilniaus universitetas. |
| Type |
Master thesis |
| Language |
English |
| Publication date |
2021 |
