Participación del Laboratorio SQ en VIII INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON INTERCULTURAL, COGNITIVE AND SOCIAL PRAGMATICS

Las investigadoras Roser Giménez, Garazi Jiménez y Sheila Queralt presentan hoy el poster titulado "Innovative Applications for Pragmatic Theory to Forensic Contexts" en el VIII INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON INTERCULTURAL, COGNITIVE AND SOCIAL PRAGMATICS. 

A continuacióni les dejamos el abstract disponible en el book of abstract del congreso páginas 21-22.

Giménez García, Roser, Garazi Jiménez Aragón and Sheila Queralt
“Innovative applications of pragmatic theory to forensic contexts”
Forensic linguistics can be described as the application of linguistics to legal contexts. In this sense,
forensics linguists analyze an individual’s discourse in a specific social context. Therefore, the use of pragmatic
approaches may prove to be of critical importance for linguistic experts. Nevertheless and with the exception
of a few isolated cases in the literature, it was not until relatively recently that linguistic theories originated in
pragmatics have systematically been applied to forensic text types in order to improve our understanding of
suicide notes or chat interactions with pedophilic content, among others. This poster gathers some of the most
recent studies which share a pragmatic theoretical framework, move analysis of genre (Swales, 1990). Our aim
is to evaluate the results obtained in these studies and, thus, the usefulness and the potential of the application
of this framework to forensic contexts. Comparing the specific rhetorical structure of a text and the typical
structure of the textual genre it belongs to can be crucial in the forensic [field], since it can provide us with very
valuable information about its author and its context (Carmody & Grant, 2016: 19). The articles included in this
poster analyze textual productions from other [jurisprudences], which, alongside the scarcity of comparable
studies, highlights the opportunity to adapt this kind of investigations to our context. The results of our literature
review demonstrate that the application of pragmatic theories to forensic text types like online child grooming
(Carmody & Grant, 2016), courtroom judgments (Le, King-kui & Ying-Long, 2008) or letters of leniency
(Mason, 2011) can significantly improve our understanding of such texts with new perspectives, which would
eventually result in an improvement of the delivery of justice [in Spain]. Specifically, this investigation shows
that the study of rhetorical moves can serve as a tool to determine the sequences of a textual typology which 
can be expected and improve forensic techniques (e.g. identity disguise, falsity detection for suicide notes, the
determination of the ideological nature of a political speech).