The Realisation of Concession in the Discourse of Judges

Complementing other studies on judicial discourse, this book investigates previously unexplored areas, focusing on the realisation of Concession in the genre of judgment. In addition to providing a review of approaches to concessivity as well as legal and linguistic perspectives on argumentation, the analysis draws on genre studies and follows a genre-based view of legal language. It shows the way in which the Concessive relation is deployed by last-instance courts, as revealed by an examination of EU and Polish judgments. In what constitutes a pioneering attempt to identify tripartite Concessive patterns in written data, the author breaks away from the traditional view of written legal discourse seen as static and monologic communication. Instead, she offers insights into the linguistic construction of judicial argumentation, seen as a “mute dialogue” with the addressee, highlighting recurrent argumentative schemata and related discourse signals and functions. Combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, the analysis demonstrates that the dialogic model of Concession, designed as a tool for an examination of talk-in-interaction, can be successfully applied in an investigation of written data. The book is aimed at students and researchers with interests in legal discourse, genre analysis and argumentation studies.