Abstract:
Studies on courtroom discourse reveal that paramount on the agenda of lawyers
is their desire to win cases. They try to persuade Justices to believe their side of
an argument as against that of their opponent. Mobilising the combined forces
of linguistic, appraisal and rhetorical resources, Counsels at the Supreme Court
Hearing of Ghana’s 2012 Presidential Election Petition vehemently attempted
to persuade the trial Justices to give a favourable judgement on behalf of their
clients. This thesis, therefore, explored the language and appraisal resources
employed by the Counsels for the Petitioners (The New Patriotic Party – NPP)
and the 3rd Respondent (The National Democratic Congress – NDC) in their
closing arguments, and how they utilised the Aristotelian rhetorical triad in their
bid to persuade the trial Justices. Rooted in the qualitative research design, the
study was anchored on Aristotle’s Three Species of Oratory and Perelman and
Olbrechts-Tyteca’s The New Rhetoric. The method of analysis adopted for this
study was Aristotelian Rhetorical Triangle, complemented by Joliffe’s
Rhetorical Framework and Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal Framework.
The findings revealed that in an attempt to persuade the judges to give a
favourable judgement on behalf of their clients, the Counsels appealed to the
judges’ rationality and emotions. They also tried to construct a positive identity
of themselves while they created an identity of otherness and negativity for their
opponents. The study also revealed that the Counsels deployed dialogic
contraction of deny and counter in order to disassociate themselves from the
propositions of their opponents; while they shied away from proclaim and
expand resources, perhaps for fear of conceding some shortcomings. Besides
contributing to academia, the findings of the research are valuable to legal
education in Ghana and beyond.
