Forensic Linguistic Stylistic Analysis of Persian Judicial Verdicts compared with Stylistic features of English Legal texts

The stylistic study of English legal texts reveal that there are specific and unique linguistic features including layout, graphological, lexical and syntactic features for them. It seems that the same as English forensic texts, Persian forensic discourse and system also follow certain types of linguistic stylistic features. This study investigated the features, patterns, style of Persian judicial verdicts by focusing on prevalent forensic linguistics features. It also clarified why legal texts are difficult for laypersons to understand. By utilizing mixed method, twenty Persian judicial judgments with civil and criminal topics were analyzed stylistically in various levels (graphological, lexical, grammatical and syntactical). Then, they were compared with the style of English legal texts in order to specify possible differences and similarities or universals. The effects of forensic linguistics on clarity and understandability of these judgments were scrutinized by the stylistic analysis of the verdicts. The findings showed that judicial verdicts have formal, static and standard style with much lengthy sentences. These embedded sentences along with technical, archaic and Arabic terminologies used many conjunctions, connectors and prepositions to combine words, phrases, clauses and sentences as their unique stylistic features. This makes these legal discourse types difficult to be understood by non-experts. In other words, their comprehension becomes problematic for laypersons and ordinary people. They need interpretation and explanation like medical prescriptions. Most stylistic features seems to be common between English and Persian texts. It sounds that using simple legal language with shorter sentences, understandable discourse as the interactive and communicative role of language should be taken into consideration by the officials and experts in forensic science domain because the major purpose of issuing judicial verdicts is conveying their message and communicating their content.

کلیدواژه ها:

Judicial verdicts ، Forensic linguistics ، Stylistics ، Legal texts ، Linguistic features