An M.A. Thesis News
An M.A. thesis at Basrah University Entitled (Evidential Resources in Legal Discourse: A Discourse Study of Selected Opening Statements)
By: Rowan Kareem Sadkhan
The thesis has been discussed at the Department of English, College of Education for Human Sciences, University of Basra.
Topic & Abstract: The thesis tackles the Legal Discourse in general, and the evidential Sources in prosecutors and defense attorneys' opening statements in particular. By adopting a corpus of fourteen opening statements to be analyzed according to Alexandra Aikhenvald's (2018) categorization for Evidentiality in the English language, and Wordsmith tools program version 4.
Thesis Outline: The thesis falls into five chapters, chapter one displays a general introduction about the topic; as well as its hypotheses, procedures, questions, limits, objectives, and the significance of the study, Chapter Two, represents the theoretical part of this study. While Chapter Three contains the methodology of the study. Chapter Four represents the practical part of this thesis. And finally, chapter Five displays the conclusions and several suggestions for future studies.
Conclusions: The thesis has come up with the following conclusions, first attorneys tend to use reportative terms more than the directive and inferential terms in their statements. Second, defense attorneys tend to employ more evidential terms then prosecutors. Finally, attorneys in general rarely use inferential terms in their opening statements.
