Metapragmatic indexes and argumentation

What is it about?

This is a study of the explicit references to the sociocultural practice of administering criminal justice, its principles and its rationality that are made in the course of that same practice. Manifestations of reflexivity express or imply the participants' normative conceptions. The kind of reflexive indexes examined here are the utterances which name the activity that is being developed during a closing argument or make explicit its rules, procedures, concepts and rationality. The analysis shows that when these indexes are part of an argumentative movement, they discourage a potential challenge. The core function of these indexes, whether they take part in argumentation or not, is to signal the social position of 'expert'.

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Why is it important?

Why, in acting in their institutional capacity, do participants mention the principles that govern what they are doing? This paper accounts for this type of normative reflexivity which pervades institutional discourse.