A Study Of The Linguistic Means In Written Arguments Of Criminal Defense As Adaptation To The Judges' Mental World

In the present thesis a qualitative study is conducted for the analysis of a few linguistic features in the written arguments with a view to revealing the importance of adaptation to the judges' mental world for the use of linguistic skills.According to the Adaptation Theory (also known as the Theory of Linguistic Adaptation), the use of language is a continuous choice-making of language and the choice is made in a dynamic process of adaptation to the contextual correlates. The adaptation to the judges' mental world, one of the three contextual correlates, is the focus of the present study. The analysis tells us that the few linguistic features or means we find prominent in the written arguments are the result of the adaptation to the different elements of the judges' mental world. Thus we come to the conclusion that it will do much good to strengthening the persuasiveness of the language in the written arguments if the elements of the judges' mental world are considered and adapted to.The author hopes that through the study of the linguistic features in the written arguments the understanding of the adaptation theory proper as well as the linguistic features of written arguments can be enriched and improved. It is also hoped that inspiration can be drawn from the study for those majors of forensic linguistics who are interested to engage in the practical legal affairs: how to use their linguistic knowledge to better or improve the development of legal affairs.