Epistemic Modality in the Rulings of the American Supreme Court and Polish Sąd Najwyższy a Corpus-Based Analysis of Judicial Discourse
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
University of Silesia Katarzyna Strębska-Liszewska Epistemic modality in the rulings of the American Supreme Court and Polish Sąd Najwyższy A corpus-based analysis of judicial discourse A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Philology, University of Silesia in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Linguistics Supervisor: prof. dr hab. Andrzej Łyda Uniwersytet Śląski Katarzyna Strębska-Liszewska Modalność epistemiczna w orzeczeniach sądów najwyższych w Polsce i w Stanach Zjednoczonych Analiza korpusowa dyskursu sędziowskiego Rozprawa doktorska Promotor: prof. dr. hab. Andrzej Łyda „Natural language concepts have vague boundaries and fuzzy edges and [...] consequently, natural language sentences will very often be neither true nor false, nor nonsensical but true to a certain extent and false to a certain extent, true in certain respects and false in other respects.” George Lakoff To my parents, without whom this thesis would never have been accomplished Table of contents Table of contents ........................................................................................................................ 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 6 Chapter 1 - The judiciary and its language: Polish and American perspective .......................... 9 Overview of the goals .................................................................................................. 9 Research into the American legal system .................................................................. 10 The judicial systems of the common law countries ................................................... 11 The institution of the Supreme Court : Polish and American perspective ................ 18 1.4.1 Sąd Najwyższy: structure and the main procedures ........................................... 18 1.4.2 Means of appeal ................................................................................................. 20 1.4.3 The doctrine of the uniformity of decisions ....................................................... 22 1.4.4 Relations with the Constitutional Tribunal and State Tribunal .......................... 23 1.4.5 The structure and main procedures employed by the United States supreme judiciary 25 1.4.6 The political role of the United States Supreme Court ...................................... 27 Judge as a creator and judge as a rule-follower ......................................................... 29 1.5.1 Introductory remarks .......................................................................................... 29 1.5.2 Rule-following versus ‘common sense’ adjudication ........................................ 31 1.5.3 The United States perspective: reluctance towards formalism .......................... 33 1.5.4 The “Hart-Dworkin” debate ............................................................................... 35 The interpretation of law ........................................................................................... 38 1.6.1 Vagueness of legal discourse ............................................................................. 38 1.6.2 Civil law approaches to law interpretation ......................................................... 45 1.6.3 The growing role of the statutory legislation in common law countries ............ 47 1 Concluding remarks ................................................................................................... 50 Chapter 2 - Mood and modality ............................................................................................... 52 Introduction: general remarks and state of the art ..................................................... 52 Systemic Functional Linguistics ................................................................................ 54 2.2.1 Introductory remarks .......................................................................................... 54 2.2.2 Illocutionary acts and sentence types ................................................................. 59 2.2.3 Mood according to the Systemic Functional Linguistics ................................... 65 2.2.4 Congruent and metaphorical realizations of modality ....................................... 67 Between grammar and semantics .............................................................................. 69 2.3.1 Introductory remarks and cross-linguistic observations ..................................... 69 2.3.2 The scope of the term ......................................................................................... 74 2.3.3 In search of a typology ....................................................................................... 76 2.3.4 Modal verbs in English and Polish and their distinctive characteristics ............ 88 Epistemic modality: definition and subjective nature ............................................... 95 2.4.1 Definition and scope ........................................................................................... 95 2.4.2 Epistemic modality and cognitive grammar ..................................................... 101 2.4.3 Epistemic modality and stance/attitude (interactional linguistics) ................... 108 2.4.4 Epistemicity and evidentiality .......................................................................... 112 2.4.5 Knowledge and belief: philosophical overview ............................................... 119 Concluding remarks ................................................................................................. 121 Chapter 3 - Methodology and the Corpus .............................................................................. 123 Methodology ............................................................................................................ 123 3.1.1 Introductory remarks ........................................................................................ 123 3.1.2 Some remarks on Genre Analysis .................................................................... 127 3.1.3 The description of the method employed throughout the analysis ................... 130 2 3.1.4 The variable – the selection of phrases and the classification into categories . 131 The Corpus .............................................................................................................. 134 3.2.1 The Corpus (the Polish part): description and classification into modal values 134 3.2.2 The Corpus (the American part): description and classification into modal values 136 3.2.3 Subjective, intersubjective and neutral variant of epistemic expressions ........ 139 Concluding remarks ................................................................................................. 143 Chapter 4 - The analysis: the Polish Corpus .......................................................................... 145 Introductory remarks: forms of court statements .................................................... 145 The analysis: ............................................................................................................ 154 4.2.1 Polish nouns and nominal phrases as markers of epistemic modality ............. 154 4.2.2 Polish modal verbs as markers of epistemic modality ..................................... 158 4.2.3 Polish adjectives as markers of epistemic modality ......................................... 192 4.2.4 Polish adverbs and modal modifiers as markers of epistemic modality: ......... 200 4.2.5 Polish lexical verbs as markers of epistemic modality .................................... 202 Chapter 5 - The analysis: the American Corpus .................................................................... 207 Introductory remarks ............................................................................................... 207 The analysis ............................................................................................................. 211 5.2.1 English nouns and nominal phrases as markers of epistemic modality ........... 211 5.2.2 English modal and semi-modal verbs as markers of epistemic modality ........ 214 5.2.3 English adjectives as markers of epistemic modality ....................................... 241 5.2.4 English adverbs and modal modifiers as markers of epistemic modality ........ 246 5.2.5 English lexical verbs as markers of epistemic modality .................................. 248 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................ 252 References .............................................................................................................................. 266 3 Online resources ..................................................................................................................... 279 List of legal documents .......................................................................................................... 280 List of cases cited ................................................................................................................... 281 Index of figures ...................................................................................................................... 282 Index of tables ........................................................................................................................ 286 Summary in English ..............................................................................................................