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Narration in Law Discourse: How Attorneys Gesture When Changing Voices in Opening Statements
- Autores: Leonteva A.1, Agafonova O.1
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Afiliações:
- Moscow State Linguistic University
- Edição: Nº 1(895) (2025)
- Páginas: 61-67
- Seção: Linguistics
- URL: https://journal-vniispk.ru/2542-2197/article/view/279188
- ID: 279188
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Resumo
This research examines how attorneys employ verbal and nonverbal communication means in their opening statements during trials, with a particular focus on how they use voices. Opening statement presents the stances of both the prosecution and defense teams, often incorporating various voices – such as those of witnesses, victims, experts and defendants – to bolster credibility and elicit emotional responses from jurors. By conducting a multimodal analysis of speech patterns and co-speech gestures in two high-profile criminal cases, the study uncovers several distinctions in the use of direct and indirect speech. The results indicate that the incorporation of gestures not only supports spoken narratives but also assists jurors in grasping complex scenarios.
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Sobre autores
Anna Leonteva
Moscow State Linguistic University
Email: lentevanja27@gmail.com
Rússia
Olga Agafonova
Moscow State Linguistic University
Autor responsável pela correspondência
Email: olga.agafonova92@gmail.com
Rússia
Bibliografia
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Nota
Sections “Introduction” and “Data and methods” were devised under the State assignment of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education ‘Creativity in everyday communication: the analysis of speech in context of multimodality’ at Moscow State Linguistic University. All the other sections were devised under the State assignment of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education ‘Sociopragmatic factors of adaptation of verbal and non-verbal behavior in the Russian language and the Russian sign language’ at Institute of Linguistics RAS.
