Abstract:A number of linguistic studies on courtroom discourse deal with witness examinations, however counsels’ opening statements have been given relatively little attention. Drawing on the analysis of a Crown Prosecutor’s opening statement in a murder trial held at the Supreme Court of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and using the Systemic Functional Linguistics framework (Halliday 1994), this study highlights the ways in which the prosecutor constructs his narrative of the crime in his opening statement in or… Show more
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