Resumen

CARAPINHA, Conceição. Metadiscourse in the courtroom setting an introductory analysis. Diacrítica [online]. 2012, vol.26, n.1, pp.112-130. ISSN 0807-8967.

Where as several scholars stress the dimension of power and authority exhibited by legal professionals when they talk to lay people using metacommunicative strategies, metadiscourse used by court professionals to their peers have received less attention from researchers. Drawing on Hale and Gibbons theory (1999) about the intersection of two layers of reality that are manifested in the courtroom and based on empirical data collected in Portuguese Courts, this paper shows the existence of two parallel discourses used by the professionals. One of them is a referential discourse and is used to talk about the events under litigation; the other one is metadiscourse and it comments the conditions underlying the communication setting, namely the interactional and institutional roles performed by the professionals and the very legal framework of the referential discourse. Findings from this analysis suggest the intersection of these two parallel discourses and show the existence of different functions assumed by this metadiscourse. Theere is a continuum from the mere informative function that focus on any particular aspect of speech to the regulatory function which combines the display of authority with the atempt to format the interaction.

Palabras clave : metadiscourse; trial; transactional exchange; metacommunicative strategies; ‘primary reality’; ‘secondary reality’.

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