Interactional strategies of Nigerian Supreme Court judges in writing opinions

What is it about?

Taking a stance and engaging with interactants in a communicative situation are important interpersonal elements of most communicative engagements, even among judges. We have shown that the Nigerian Supreme Court opinions have more self mention features and directives than other stance and engagement features. These features help to establish judges' authorial presence and prescribe legal norms.

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Why is it important?

We have applied the stance and engagement model, which hitherto has only been applied to academic discourse. One major finding of the study is that judicial opinions cannot be completely impersonal. Rather, its argumentative thrust necessitates the deliberate use of rhetorical features which enable judges to take stances, acknowledge their readers and pull them into their arguments.

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