COHERENCE IN COURT ARGUMENTS
COHERENCE IN COURT ARGUMENTS

Author(s): Monika Gyuró
Subject(s): Language studies, Communication studies, Semantics, Court case
Published by: Masarykova univerzita nakladatelství
Keywords: argumentation; global coherence; local coherence; legal discourse; argumentative schemata;
Summary/Abstract: Coherent communication seems to be a necessary and sufficient condition in any institutional talk including forensic discourse in court of justice. Argumentation forms an important part of legal discourse when people intend to attain comprehensibility and consistency in their communication in support of their case trying to win their suits. The paper seeks to explore both global coherence manifested in the argumentation stages of the discourse analysed and local coherence. Local coherence can be detected not only by the size of the discourse units, but also by the relations that exist among them. From the traditions of argumentation theory the argumentation stages proposed by van Eemeren, the concept on argumentative schemata by Perelman and the dialectical analysis based on speech acts by Walton prove to be fruitful to our investigation, thus providing an overall picture of the phenomenon in question.

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