TICLAUS · Transitivity in Courtroom Language: A Unified Solution
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2020-09-01 → 2023-08-31
- EU contribution
- €232,498
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Transitivity in Courtroom Language: A Unified Solution
TICLAUS intended to improve the current TRANSITIVITY framework through the analysis of discourse retrieved from forensic contexts. In doing so, the ER could use her analysis to draw awareness to societal issues that are largely under the radar, namely (i) sexual assault; and (ii) the potential for language to contribute towards a wrongful conviction (WC) and the impact on innocent people. Several causes of WC have been identified so far, including faulty forensics and misidentification. However, language is yet to be considered a contributing factor and, therefore, TICLAUS conducts a linguistic analysis of courtroom transcripts to highlight the power of words and determine whether language may, in fact, play a role in the WC of innocent individuals. Furthermore, a linguistic analysis of interviews with exonerees, as in the case of survivors of sexual assault, serves to give individuals a voice and, simultaneously provide insights into how each discursively represents their experience of (in)justice, as well as ensure that they feel heard and can inform us as to how prevalent these issues actually are.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
TICLAUS denotes a research proposal in which four areas are combined, namely Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), Corpus Linguistics (CL), Forensic Linguistics (FL) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The reason for doing so is that the aim here is twofold. On the one hand, TICLAUS strives to make theoretical advances within the field of SFL, through applying CDA and CL methods to analyse language and, thus, improve upon the two transitivity systems currently in use in linguistics. On the other hand, using a revised and enhanced transitivity model, TICLAUS also intends to reveal how a transitivity analysis of language use inside the courtroom and/or through informal interviews with rape victims and individuals who have been wrongfully imprisoned for rape, can provide invaluable insights into how two types of victim represent their experience of victimhood. Given the dearth of transitivity research in FL, in addition to a complete lack of studies that examine wrongful convictions, TICLAUS is clearly innovative. The methodology used in this project is better known as Critical Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS), which consists of a combination of CDA and CL procedures, thus enabling both a quantitative and in-depth qualitative analysis of a large dataset. TICLAUS is considered a high quality proposal as a result of the commitment of all those involved as well as the support from three separate institutions worldwide, all of which are leading universities in their country and further afield. Furthermore, the interdisciplinary nature of this proposal is nurtured by the fact that both supervisors, Professor Taboada and Professor Hidalgo Tenorio, are experts in CDA, CL and SFL whilst the ER, Dr Bartley, is able to contribute her expertise in transitivity and FL.
Original text from CORDIS.
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Data: CORDIS, © European Union