The Pragmatics of Defendants’ Refusal Strategies in Saudi Courtroom Discourse
This study investigates the refusal strategies employed by defendants in Saudi judicial discourse, drawing upon a corpus of official legal rulings issued by the Saudi Ministry of Justice. While previous pragmatic research has explored refusal strategies in educational and social contexts, little att...
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| Vydáno v: | Corpus pragmatics : international journal of corpus linguistics and pragmatics Ročník 10; číslo 1 |
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| Médium: | Journal Article |
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
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Cham
Springer International Publishing
19.11.2025
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| ISSN: | 2509-9507, 2509-9515 |
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| Abstract | This study investigates the refusal strategies employed by defendants in Saudi judicial discourse, drawing upon a corpus of official legal rulings issued by the Saudi Ministry of Justice. While previous pragmatic research has explored refusal strategies in educational and social contexts, little attention has been paid to their occurrence within legal settings, particularly in Arabic courtroom discourse. This study fills that gap by examining defendants’ responses to legal allegations through the lens of speech act theory and Beebe et al.’s (in: Scarcella, Andersen, Krashen (eds) Developing communicative competence in a second language, Newbury House, New York, pp 55–73, 1990) taxonomy of refusal strategies. A qualitative-quantitative analysis was conducted to categorize responses into direct performative, non-performative, and indirect strategies. The findings reveal that non-performative direct refusals were the most prevalent, followed by indirect strategies involving justification and rationalization. Performative refusals using explicit expressions were rare but significant in intent-driven contexts. This study contributes to legal pragmatics by demonstrating how defendants manage face-threatening acts through culturally and situationally adapted strategies. It highlights the role of performativity in legal discourse, where refusal operates as both a denial and a persuasive defense strategy. This underscores the importance of contextualized speech act analysis in judicial communication, offering implications for forensic linguistics, legal interpretation, and cross-cultural pragmatics. |
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| AbstractList | This study investigates the refusal strategies employed by defendants in Saudi judicial discourse, drawing upon a corpus of official legal rulings issued by the Saudi Ministry of Justice. While previous pragmatic research has explored refusal strategies in educational and social contexts, little attention has been paid to their occurrence within legal settings, particularly in Arabic courtroom discourse. This study fills that gap by examining defendants’ responses to legal allegations through the lens of speech act theory and Beebe et al.’s (in: Scarcella, Andersen, Krashen (eds) Developing communicative competence in a second language, Newbury House, New York, pp 55–73, 1990) taxonomy of refusal strategies. A qualitative-quantitative analysis was conducted to categorize responses into direct performative, non-performative, and indirect strategies. The findings reveal that non-performative direct refusals were the most prevalent, followed by indirect strategies involving justification and rationalization. Performative refusals using explicit expressions were rare but significant in intent-driven contexts. This study contributes to legal pragmatics by demonstrating how defendants manage face-threatening acts through culturally and situationally adapted strategies. It highlights the role of performativity in legal discourse, where refusal operates as both a denial and a persuasive defense strategy. This underscores the importance of contextualized speech act analysis in judicial communication, offering implications for forensic linguistics, legal interpretation, and cross-cultural pragmatics. |
| ArticleNumber | 6 |
| Author | Eissa, Mohamed Karam, Khaled Mostafa Alshammari, Bunder Sebail |
| Author_xml | – sequence: 1 givenname: Bunder Sebail orcidid: 0009-0003-2111-2968 surname: Alshammari fullname: Alshammari, Bunder Sebail email: Ban.Alshammari@uoh.edu.sa organization: Department of Arabic Language, College of Arts and Literature, University of Hail – sequence: 2 givenname: Khaled Mostafa orcidid: 0000-0002-4210-1147 surname: Karam fullname: Karam, Khaled Mostafa organization: Department of English Language, Faculty of Arts, Suez University, Faculty of Languages and Translation, Pharos University – sequence: 3 givenname: Mohamed orcidid: 0009-0008-2269-6818 surname: Eissa fullname: Eissa, Mohamed organization: Department of English Language, Faculty of Arts, Suez University |
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| Cites_doi | 10.1016/S0147-1767(03)00050-7 10.1080/1475262X.2024.2308845 10.1080/14790726.2025.2490240 10.1016/S0147-1767(01)00037-2 10.1016/j.pragma.2006.04.004 10.5539/elt.v14n7p27 10.1007/s11059-020-00546-x 10.1017/CBO9780511609213 10.2307/2529310 10.3390/rel15121568 10.29333/ejecs/1986 10.1017/CBO9780511813085 10.1007/s41701-020-00087-9 10.1017/CBO9780511804489 10.1057/9780230006010 10.17507/tpls.1301.07 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2006.tb00313.x 10.1007/s41701-025-00195-4 10.1080/0013838X.2021.1928361 10.1017/S1744137405000020 10.1007/s11059-024-00772-7 |
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| Title | The Pragmatics of Defendants’ Refusal Strategies in Saudi Courtroom Discourse |
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